Dahlia's - recommended sources?
Andi-sadoldsod
Posts: 15
Dahlia's - recommended sources? ... Hi all, replanting a garden this year and have expressed a preference for Dahlia's. Some advice was cautionary, some wildly enthusiastic, but none was sufficiently scary to put me off! ..... So, the question is:- can anyone please recommend good reliable sources, and even names and types ... at this juncture I must admit I'm being rather shallow and looking for Big Bright and Blousey. (They're intended to underplant Roses)?
Very many thanks.........................
0
Posts
When you're saying big and blowsy, do you want tall or dwarf plants. I had a beautiful cafe au lait last year, a taylors bulb I think, but it didn't flower until late September. A dwarf bedding type will not need staking. I'm not sure about underplanting roses. Dahlias need digging up each year, disturbing rose roots. Dahlias need feeding through the flowering season, that would induce soft growth late in the season for roses.
OK - in the same beds as Roses .......... perhaps I'm trying to be too convivial and chatty??????
....... "Can anyone please recommend reliable online mail order sources for Dahlia's - Thanks".
Sarah Raven has some nice dahlias in her current catalogue.
I grow dahlias every year, A couple of years ago I started a new rose border semi under planted with lower growing dahlias. To my mind it wasn't a god idea. I've found that dahlias flower much better when dead headed not a pleasant task when dodging rose thorns.
I've used both Peter Nyssen and Rose Cottage Plants with good stock supplied. RC do packs of 3 and display plants by colour which helps with choosing, PN are slightly cheaper and Sarah Raven a lot more expensive. EG: Dahlia 'Bishop of Llandaff', RC £7 for 3, PN &1.90 each, SR £4.50 each. I grow them partly for cutting and partly to add substance to the late summer borders which can get a bit ' wispy' without some nice solid flowers. Among my favourites are Karma Naomi ( really good doer!) Ellen Huston, David Howard, Twynings After Eight and funny little Scura that hardly behaves like a dahlia at all, but multiplies like mad! I now have it all along the front edge of my hot border.
Thanks everyone - sorry if I comes across as "not gardeny enough"? But I'm at a stage where I just need people to point at stuff and say - "That one, it's everything you'll need"!
To elucidate these are for the beds out of which springs an Arch and a David Austin climber. Basically if you plump up a pillow - that's what I'm trying to do to these new and unplanted (so far) beds.
I know I'm going to get it a bit wrong, but I'm really just trying to pick out the bits I like - and I'll just KBO.
Thanks again.
Everyone who posts on here has a knowledge base somewhere between zero to blooming heck clever. I find it good fun to read and pick up kernels of knowledge all the time. Enjoy.
I grew Dahlia's last year for the first time, I had great success growing from seed, I lifted the tubers of which some were very large for the first year of growth
Plus it was a lot cheaper than buying in quantities of tubers.
Seed is easy, as long as you want mixtures! It's good for the dwarf ones and I've grown some mixed cactus ones and got some good colours, though quite a few were only semi-cactus, with fewer petals so less effective.
It's hard to judge colours from the catalogue photos - not really their fault, the light changes the colour all the time. I've tried often to get pictures of my plants that looked the way they looked to me, but the camera saw them differently every time! Some of the named ones are absolute beauties though, and once you've got one tuber you can split it or take cuttings and soon have several plants, but you do need somwehere to bring them on in spring. Winter's ok, you can pack them in a box somewhere frost-free, but eventually you will need to pot them up and it will still be too cold to put them out and they will need light!