The wedges I was referring to were the oasis wedges- they're quite expensive as opposed to getting the cheap stuff at a craft store & cutting it up. Support- in an ADS show there can be no support above the rim of the container- obviously, the fair in your picts. doesn't have that rule. I think if this were the NW WA fair the judges wouldn't like the supports up there showing like that- & if you can have them that high-- how high up can they go? I'd see if I could find out-- the head of the floral dept. could probably help you out there. Do's & don'ts-- some of the entries have way too many leaves to be attractive. In an ADS show one set of leaves is required but if it's a large bloom (AA or A) then sometimes 2 sets will look better. Too much clutter takes away from the look of the entry- as if they're trying to hide something. Stems in proportion the the size of blooms makes a better display, too- so the smaller the bloom the less stem needed to make it look good, but a large bloom sitting with it's neck on the rim of the pot looks uncomfortable & cramped. Nice straight stems are more attractive than crooked ones & will probably net you more points in the judging. When entering triples-- have them all looking in the same direction with one taller one in back & the two shorter ones in front the same height-- or two of the same height in back & one shorter in front-- the main thing is to have them all looking at the judge. Be sure your blooms are hardened off & in top condition -- they'll last longer & look better than the competition. Cut them the day before & put them in floralife in a dark, cool place for a few hours to drink before staging them in the containers. Cut either in the early a.m. before the sun hits them or late in the evening after they've gone to sleep. We're usually out there at 6am the day before a show, cutting & putting in buckets to harden off. Floralife in the water really helps, too. We usually don't have to replace any of our fair entries the whole week since they're in water with floralife- not foam - & can drink freely. Some people's entries have to be replaced by Tuesday- 2 days into the fair. When we first started entering in the NW WA fair there weren't too many dedicated dahlia growers entering -- more garden clubbers-- & since we followed ADS rules, we always won everything because the blooms were displayed to their best advantage & anything that I didn't think deserved a first, didn't get to go to the fair. So if it doesn't look good at home, it's not going to look good at the fair & why bother going to all the trouble of taking something that's less than the best- it's a lot of work! If your wife says your flowers look better than these, they probably do-- just say, "Yes, dear" & proceed to enter & knock their sox off!! Fairs are a good place to start because they don't have as hard & fast rules as ADS shows & you can get your feet wet there & then you're ready for the big time-- there's nothing like entering an ADS show & getting your first blues against all the hard-core dahlia growers!

Hi Jim: Everything I have ever read and the times I have tried to grow them, hollow cuttings will not produce roots and to throw them away. That will happen sometimes with the first cuttings off a tuber or as I do sometimes in the fall take cuttings from some garden plants to winter over and if you get a stem too long it will be hollow. So I would just go with the follow on cuttings and toss the hollow ones. Cuttings placed into soil without roots have a very poor chance of living long enough to make roots. When I first started doing cuttings I would have a 50-60% failure rate which was discouraging. I started putting them into jars of wet sand for 36-48 hours and then in soil and that helped but still not a high enough success rate. Finally, I learned about the Oasis Wedge System (not Oasis Cubes)which has about a 90-99% success rate and I use it every year. I don't even use a rooting hormone as they root so well in the wedges. Cowlitz Dahlias has wedges for sale or you can google and find other suppliers. Sorry for the bad news. Here is a link that might be useful: Cowlitz Dahlias

From historic doors.com Batten Door A wooden door made of vertical planks or boards fastened together with horizontal boards (battens), which are usually nailed to the inside of the door. Decorative nailheads can be used for ornamentation, as well as distinctive strap or metal hinges. Exterior doors are usually constructed with two layers of planks on either side of the battens. Also referred to as a board-and-batten door, plank-style door, or unframed door, this style was found in early American Colonial architecture in New England. The batten was what held the boards together. the boards could be tongue and groove, but that in itself wouldn't hold up in that sort of constant swinging usage. Actually these doors have been around a very long time, because unless you had a single large plank to cover the doorway, this was the simplest sort of door to make. They continued using these doors through the 19th c. until manufactured doors dropped in price and were readily available to just about everyone. They were often used for basements, etc. in the later part of the century. Here is a link that might be useful: doors

The architectural term is "corbel" That is not an off-the-shelf item. It has particular dimensions and an angle that is specific to your roof line. To make it, it looks like you will have to use a jig saw to cut out the design in the two outer pieces, and then these would be laminated to a solid center piece. Once it was all put together, you would then use a band saw to do the outer profile. This is not something that you'll find at Home Depot, or even a specialty lumber store. If you don't have the skills and the power tools to do this, any decent carpenter can make it, but it will likely be costly.