Hi mamabear,
what zone are you in?

As a rule of thumb you plant them when the soil is warm enough for tomatos.

IME you can chop the tops off when they are about kneehigh, if you want bushier plants,

After that only if they get too lanky.

The tubers may take some time to start growing, one or two weeks, if it is warm enough.

Perhaps others chime in

Oh, did you put in stakes already?

Enjoy your first Dahlias,

Bye, Lin

Hi Mamabear86 ,
If SC means you live in South Carolina it's a little early to plant Dahlias .
Because we will still have some cold nights.
Best time to plant them is after April 5th when soil is warm enough.

Thank you both. Yes by SC I do mean South Carolina. Ops. And no I haven't put the stakes in yet. I wasn't sure if I should do that before or after they started to grow. I had no information on this flower before I planted them expect what was on the package. So I may have made a few mistakes. Thanks for all of y'all's help.

Hi, Mamabear. I just bought my first Dahlias as well so maybe we can keep our fingers crossed for each other. I have one small patch of yard that comes close to getting full sun all day, so that's where I'll be trying mine out.

The following problem is not too common but it is possible, especially with bare roots that one isn't too familiar with. Just make sure that the root was planted right-side up.

And keep your receipt since Lowe's offers a 1-year plant guarantee in case the root didn't grow after all.

If and when you top off your dahlia, you can also try another technique of gardening -- rooting that cutting to try to make more dahlia plants!

It's *finally* warm enough here that I felt safe planting my two "test cases." They are called "Kogane Fubuki." I put the stakes in first, broke up the soil that I'd already prepped a month ago, etc. Hopefully I got them in the ground right-side up. I saw a small white shoot from one of them, and it looked more like a stem than a root. So I faced it upward. A couple of smaller pieces had broken off one tuber in the bag, but hopefully not enough to seriously hurt the plant. I guess we'll see. [crosses fingers]

...And, six days later, I got my first leaf growth from the tuber that had already sprouted when I planted it.

It's been very rainy here, but hopefully the soil will drain sufficiently for it to keep growing.

Last year at this time I have more Dahlias .
This year only few of them.
Like always Arabian night Dahlias opens at first.

This post was edited by symi77 on Wed, May 21, 14 at 14:00

Great to hear !

I got 2 bare-root astilbes and put them in the same container on different sides of the container. One came up first. It was growing so nice and bushy that I thought the other must have died off. However, within the last week or so, it is also growing something now. So the lesson learned is that a gardener still needs to be patient to see the efforts pay off.

symi77, that's a great-looking flower! :)

gardenper, you're definitely right. Both of the tubers are now showing quite a lot of growth. (I can already tell that I should have planted them further apart, but there's that whole limited space thing. What can ya' do?)

Hopefully, Mamabear86 will check in and let us know how hers are progressing, too.