Personally, I do not understand what one is supposed to do with a 14 inch flower and purposely grow my flowers to be smaller than that. Yet some people really seem to enjoy this and even assume that it the purpose of dahlia growing. Reply: Here in the Northwest, dinner plate dahlias are not grown nearly as much as in other areas of the USA. Even the people who show flowers do not grow that many dinner plate sized dahlias here. I have seen shows with over 1000 blooms and only 20 or so dinner plate varieties. At the flower markets in the Northwest(like Pike Street Market in Seattle) you will see 20 or more vendors who sell dahlia cut flowers. Many are the show varieties that you disparage as too hard to grow. There also seems to be a vast cultural distance between the Dutch hybridizers who produce lines like Karma, Melody and Allegro, and the dahlia culture in the Northwest, which seems to be centered around producing flowers for show. I really like the Dutch approach, and also think it may leave American growers who are focused on the comparatively small market for show dahlias out of a much bigger market for dahlias as garden plants. Just see what a good job White Flower Farm has done in sorting through all the available cultivars and choosing ones that will look good in a garden. Reply: You mention White Flower Farm but not Swan Island Dahlias which is the largest grower of dahlias in the USA. They grow 45 acres of dahlias. They do not specialize in show dahlias but in dahlias for all purposes. They sell cut flowers to wholesalers and many times that means as many as 1000 bunches in a day. They ship cut flowers all over the USA. Unlike the Dutch growers, they do not patent their new varieties and anyone can sell them after they get some from them. They sell varieties suitable for any garden from 1 foot tall to 6 feet tall and many have dark foliage too. I grow my dahlias for: - color in the perennial garden from late June to early November - cut flowers I like most dahlias but tend to shy away from ones that have been overly bred for show, and think that some of these flowers look like overgrown sunflowers on corn stalks. Reply: The dinner plate dahlias look as you describe. However, as I previously mentioned very few of the dahlias in the Northwest shows are dinner plate varieties. Most show varieties are excellent all around flowers. I think that I am in a minority in this group. I also think that some of the older dahlias have more deeply saturated color and look more elegant in bouquets due to the color and their thinner stems. Reply: Many of the show dahlias are older varieties too. Kidd's Climax dates to before 1940. Newer dahlias are being bred with much more saturated colors than old timers. Kenora Wow is brighter than any old time dahlia. Sorbet is too. Both are easy to grow. There are many other examples. Comments? It would be really interesting if people said what they really thought . . . without upsetting anyone.

It seems like it's pretty common to have mis-labled dahlias from the garden centers or big box stores. Swan Island is more reputable and will probably never have that problem. The size and shape of your dahlias will depend on a lot of factors (weather, soil, and how you are 'grooming' your plant). In terms of grooming - be sure to top and disbud your plant. That means, do not allow the side buds to bloom on a lateral(or branch) - only the center bud. Generally, the lower laterals produce larger blooms than the upper laterals. The upper ones are usually the ones that bloom first; so sometimes I'll get bigger blooms later in the year once the lower laterals start to bloom. I 'disbranch' many laterals in order to focus the plants energy. With the larger AA or A dahliad, I'll only allow 3-4 laterals to grow initially so that the plant's energy is focused on producing those blooms. B's - 4-6 laterals, BB's etc - 8-10 laterals. A much better explanation of some of the grooming can be found in the link below. Here is a link that might be useful: Topping Dahlias

when a plant is young and healthy it has new roots. when the roots get old the plant is old. old roots have problems the roots might be sick. the best thing in my mind is to take a cutting of the old plant and root it. plant the new rooted cutting and you have a new plant on new roots. if the soil is fresh the plant should give big peppers again. there is also the possibility that the plant picked up some germs, pathogens, disease, virus etc of the roots that is holding it back. dont know. but I do know that Young new plants on young new roots grow well. Old plants on old roots grow like old people. I am old. and so I understand it from experience. I just can not do what I could do when I was young. Your soil in that spot might now have pathogens holding back the plant. so a new plant in the same spot might not grow like the first one did. the soil can get depleted also. I would root a new cutting and add a lot of new fresh compost to the spot before putting in the new plant.

Yumtomatoes, My eyes and my mouth suggest to me that all the tomatoes on one plant may not be GENETICALLY IDENTICAL!!! Furthermore, I have saved and kept segregated seed from two tomatoes sourced from the same plant. These were planted in rows side by side the next spring. There were observable differences in row to row performance, as well as plant to plant performance in the same row. Of course, there is the rare chance one or both could have been externally cross pollinated--not very likely. On only one occasion have I gone to the trouble of bagging a blossom cluster before they opened, then saved the seed for future use. Though I did not do side by side row comparisons from seed collected from more than one tomato I did see plant to plant variation from single tomato sourced seed. I have a suspicion that there are trivial genetic variations in all seed from the same fruit and major variations between some of the seeds. I can't otherwise account for what I have observed.