I'd pull the bud apart and look inside to see if there's a bug or something in there. Is the stem that the dried up bud is on still healthy? Certainly sounds strange. Cheers, Russ

Poochella to the rescue again! I used horse manure to amend prior to planting, and then added a 10-10-10, and have bought tomato spikes for next week or two (the 10-10-10 said to reapply every month, so I'm waiting for it's month to be up). I haven't seen ANY buds form, so hopefully these just take a while. I think there's about 4 hours of sun. Here is a closeup of the damage from some kind of pest... It's the light colored "figure eight" near the center of the photo, sorry for the bad pic, camera phone. The leaves look blotchy in the photo, they don't look that way in real life. This is part of the dahlia patch...this photo was taken just after dawn yesterday.

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

I agree about Amity Estate. I planted it in 2003 and in 2004 had no blooms whatsoever. This year I thought it wasn't going to bloom again, then all of the sudden it had more blooms and bloom stalks than I had on any of my other irises! The bloom period wasn't as long as some others and it bloomed later than the others,- but boy when it started blooming it was throwing up stalks right and left. Really looks pretty from a distance in the garden because of the dark color and because its very tall. This picture was taken when Amity first started to bloom. The tallest iris you see is Amity Estate. The shorter ones on the right that look similar to Amity (from a distance) are Armageddon.