Judy, I live in Aiken county, SC and I had a beautiful Dahlia garden last summer in Pennsylvania. I will be planting my tubers in the ground and severely ammending the soil to do it, so you will have an easier job using raised beds. I would have 2 foot raised beds.(my choice) They love loom. Rich, well composted soil (top soil and manure) just not too much manure, more top soil. Buy 3-4 foot planting sticks B4 you plant the tubers. (bamboo sticks work well) When you plant the tubers eye up, put a small amount of bone meal in with the tuber. Then cover with soil mixed with composted manure and lightly mulch. Place the stick right in back of the tuber at this point. That way when they grow up and start to get heavy, you can gently tie them with string or knee highs to keep them upright. I bought a soaker hose for my Dahlias because they develop rot real easy when watered from above. Most Dahlias can take hot temps, just not alot of rain, or they start to rot. In the middle of the summer, clean them out, you will see their bottom leaves and some leaves on the inside of them rot, just pinch them off and remove this, which will allow air to move around them more. Then they will bloom yet again. Good luck to you with your new dahlias, they are addicting. Please post a pic after your dalias start to bloom.

Is not always sunny here Poochela, it depends greatly in which area of the country you live, I live in the State of Guanajuato ( central Mexico, where dahlias are originary from ) where we have a very well defined seasonal pattern, from November to late May it´s warm, sunny and dry most of the time, then from late May until late September it rains for days in a row, then we have a few days break before it rains again ( whenever you see in the weather channel a hurricane is forming and moving in the Gulf of Mexico heading it´s way to the Gulf States you can picture me with a rain coat and an umbrella ), it gets sunny, humid and I can barely keep the lawn under control or it become a jungle in a couple of weeks ( gotta mow twice a week ). Many of the mysteries of dahlia growth have a reason, dahlias are native to the central part of Mexico ( the zone where I live in ) even though what we grow is grown somewhere else and even with the manipulation by man to create new varieties the plant continues to follow the seasonal schedule of growth and development from the place from where it originated and maintains the same requirements, we can´t eliminate millions of years of evolution with a few hundreds years of domestication. That´s why dahlias grow when it´s warm and the soil is moist ( during the rainy season ), that´s why in warm areas tubers don´t need to be lifted during the winter, down here it sedomly gets too cold for the tubers to survive and the soil never freezes over. The plant grows when the climatic conditions are right, warm and with plenty of water ( the seasonal pattern I described ) and go dormant when one of the conditions is not fulfilled which is the abundance of water ( when the rainy season ends and there´s no longer any rainfall ), the plant withers and all that remains is the tuber. Back then during the age of the dinosaurs when I was a child I remember that along the roads dahlias grew wild ( wild varieties ) exactly during the summer just to dissapear during the late autumn, but they didn´t grow one next to the other, they grew individually several feet away ( where they get plenty of sunlight but also with lots of air circulation to maintain the foliage dry ). We are the ones that insist in growing them close together so we are not imitating the way the grow in the wild, they can tolerate and even thrive on how we keep them but the price we pay can be diseased plants if we push it. It was quite a show to see the infinite color scheme and simplicity of wild dahlias that you no longer see because the land being developed for other uses and more modern farming techiques where farmers don´t grow crops on the road because they need it to transit, also, no longer you can see a lot of plants growing along the roads because they mow continously in order to keep the area around the roads clean of vegetation, where there used to be dahlias now there´s only grass.

I am also new to dahlias this year, and have several large tubers in the ground as well as smaller ones in containers. At the beginning of the summer, I had a horrible ant problem as well. They were eating the leaves leaving gross little white egg looking things on the stems. Anyway, I bought a can of insect powder called Selvin and dusted it over the dahlias. The ants returned several weeks later and I dusted again. Now, about two months later, I haven't had any more problems and the plants are doing very well!!!

I attempted to plant my first test this fall using the UF guide. Then I look at my just now barely eating size plants and compare them to Tom's, Silvia's and Lou's and scratch my head. Or pull my hair out. Recently, I'm thinking I need to ask more questions about how to start seeds. And, while I was looking around in the seed starting forum, I found an interesting FAQ about Byron's World Famous Tea Recipe (linked below). I've been working on my early spring planting plan, and I've got what I think are my seed start dates figured out. But, just how do you experts start your seed? I found that starting in garden mix in cell trays didn't work so wonderful. Starting in seed mix in cups works really well, but then they need to be planted out to keep growing. Right now, I'm thinking of starting the winter seed in cups then transplanting to garden mix in cell trays. Once the plants are in cell trays; I was going to line the bottom of my cart with black plastic; put the cell trays on top. Then roll the cart out to the driveway each morning, and back into the garage each night. During the winter that is. Then I read about somebody putting an old window up on blocks and putting their seed trays on black plastic underneath and just leaving it in place. Presuming we have growing babies, how often do you fertilize and with what? I'm not going to have my worm factory crawling around under my babies to help if they are getting carted in and out of the garage, so I'm guessing I'll need to give them a bit more personal TLC. So, starting seeds and growing edible baby plants? WTB tips, tricks and hints! ~dianne Here is a link that might be useful: Byron's World Famous Tea Recipe