How Does Your Garden Grow: Dahlias

You You Hi everybody glad you stopped in again We're just getting into the Dahlia season now So I thought I'd cut some Dahlia's and bring them in and I also stopped by my friend Lou West's house, you know Lou's well, he's a lawyer, but he likes to grow Dahlia's as a hobby and he's one of the outstanding Dahlia growers in the country, you know, he's been just about everything including president of the Central States Dahlia Society and Whenever the Dahlia fellows get together for a show Anything like that.

Well, he's usually right there in the midst of it.

I Want to show you one in particular here some of these large ones Well, this this is pirate treasure Well, Jim Marsh who lives not far from here brought this over to me because you know Jim's the fellow that actually hybridized and developed this one and it's been quite a sensation Just look at the size of that tremendous flower.

It's well, that's better than a foot across in diameter I just put this back because I want to show you another one of Jim Marsh's latest Achievements and that's this one down here.

It's a very new one In fact, I think just the last year or so that he's developed this and he calls it Prairie Fire While we're looking looking at some of these big ones.

Look at this.

This is called Esquire.

That's an informal decorative Here's one from Scotland and that's a semi cactus.

You see the quills are kind of curled back About well a semi cactus.

They're curled back about halfway and a true cactus is one like this Where they're curled back all the way Sort of like the spines on a regular cactus While we're looking at some of these here's another informal decorative and well, this is called Sunrays and this This is from Australia another very nice informal decorative No, it's very confusing all the various names of the types of dahlias and Well, I wanted to tell you about this little booklet that the Central States Dahlia Society originated back in about 1932 I believe it was and then the American Dahlia Society also joined in with them and it's interesting because each year they alternate one year they put the name of the American Dahlia Society on top and then the Central States underneath and the following year they'll reverse that put Central States on top and that way that shows no favoritism But this lists all the different types and to give you some idea of the 14 or 15 types of dahlias that Have been classified.

Well, there's the single that would be one like this You see it just has a single row of petals right around the outside and that's very easy to Distinguish then there's mignon and orchid flowering dahlias.

Here's an orchid flowering dahlias You notice it's almost like a cactus Dahlia with just a single row of petals around the the center here Then after that comes an anemone and Colorette here's a color rep it has Sort of a collar around these smaller petals It's sort of a large petals and then smaller ones around the inside and that's called color rep Then there's a peony Dahlia.

Well over here.

Here's a peony Dahlia This is a nice bright red one, but that supposed to resemble somewhat of peony then there are Well in there are the cactus Dahlia as I pointed out here is a typical cactus Dahlia you can see how Spiny the the little petals are just all rolled up And then there are the well, let's see under cactus there are the incurved cactus and the straight cactus and Semi cactus they're the ones that aren't curled all the way then there are the formal decorative.

There's a formal decorative You see the the petals are arranged in perfect rows around there very formally arranged then there are the informal decorative like these big ones this pirate treasure of Jim Marsh's and Balled alias miniature Dahlia's pom -pom Dahlia's well the pom -poms are these little ones like that and Dwarf Dahlia's so that gives you an idea of all the different types of Dahlia's that there are and Well, I got some pictures that I wanted to show you of Lou West out in his Dahlia garden But first here's an important word for you Well before I show you the pictures I mentioned I noticed the waters come to a boil here You can see it's boiling really vigorously I'm gonna just take that off and set it down here So that'll stop boiling enough and you can see what I'm gonna do Well, I have a little trick that I want to show you about reviving Wilted Dahlia's now look at this one.

You see it's it's really in bad shape and Well, you might think that was ready to be thrown out but I just want to get out my pocket knife and Show you how you can Revive your old wilted Dahlia's and make them last for several days more four or five days Make a diagonal cut and then put that stem right down into the boiling water And you'll notice all those little bubbles coming up You see the steam and the heat seems to force the air out of the stem when you put this back in the cold water again, it will well it draws the water right up into the stem and I'm going to show you a time -lapse picture of how it revised it So instead of throwing your Dahlia's out when they first wilt like this If you'll just give them this boiling water treatment You can revive them and they'll go right on growing it so that you can enjoy them for four or five days more It usually takes about 30 to 45 seconds Just hold them hold the stems right in that boiling water As long as the bubbles come out and then when they when the bubbles stop coming out.

Well take them Take it and put it right back quickly into the cold water And when I show you those time -lapse pictures, I'll show you just how that will revive.

Well now We might as well go on and look at these pictures that I told you about Well here you can see the time -lapse of that Dahlia reviving after it had the hot water treatment You see it'll go right on growing and developing and more of those petals open up and Just looks like a fresh Dahlia you can pull off the ones that were rather wilted at the back It'll last for several more days.

So just think of this before you throw out any of your Dahlia's that look half dead Well now let's take a look at Lou West here in his garden He has the stakes in and all marked off with spring to get the rows nice and straight You see he digs pretty good sized hole to plant his Dahlia tubers in and The Dahlia's are heavy feeders.

So he works in some plant food Turns the soil over works it down very nicely little peat moss there and Then he'll take the tuber You notice he's got the tag right on the tuber that he takes off and he'll fasten that up on the top of the stake He plants the the neck of the tuber toward the stake so that that's where the Stem will come up start growing right along the stake.

It'll be easier to tie it that way And then he'll take the tubers and he'll put them on the top of the stake And don't forget to put those tags up there because later on when that flower comes out if it's a particularly nice one You're gonna want to know what it was and the water of course, well now earlier in the year Lou starts some of his tubers and cold frames are in the hot bed and Develops these new shoots and when they're a couple inches long cut them right off with a pocket knife And you can rip those and those new shoots will develop tubers this coming summer and also develop or grow the same flowers as that tuber produced that's one way to Reproduce desirable varieties propagate them.

You've got a dahlia you like particularly well You can divide the tubers in the fall and then of course if you want more than that Why you can take and plant some of them earlier than you would outside and then Take those little cuttings cut it right below below the leaf node and then trim it off as you see Lou is doing here And Lou likes to use a root hormone powder Then he puts it in his propagating bench just wet sand keep it moist Couple of weeks it'll have some nice roots and be ready to transplant outside Here they are a couple of weeks later You see those roots they can be planted into individual flower pots or into plant bands Which are just oh like those strawberry boxes fruit boxes with but they don't have any bottom.

They're thin wood They're very convenient.

They're square and they fit together better You can start values from seed also And you would plant you just plant the seed like you would any other seed blue water is a flat of soil first Gives it a good soaking of course a good soil that'll drain through very rapidly But in this way, then he doesn't wash all the seed out right away after he's planted Of course when you plant values from seed you'll get all kinds of different varieties because values don't come true to see Little covering with a fine sifted soil and here they are later ready to transplant outside Well the procedure is just about the same Whether you're planting a tuber or Planting some of these young seedlings or young plants that have been started from cuttings More plant food and peat moss work it into the soil And here is a young plant I would look just about the same whether it was started from cutting or from a seed Remember though that from the cuttings and the tubers they come true to flower and from seeds you develop different varieties that way One way or the other they've got to be watered You'll notice that the blue Cut off the bottom leaves as he's planning it deeper and now he cuts the top back That's called topping it that encourages side shoots to come out and make a pushier plant Then you'll notice he's just budding it here he's taking out those two side buds The Dalyaw has developed three buds at the top of each branch And he's also taking out these little side shoots at the leaves that just takes extra strength And as the plants get taller they have to be tied up You want to remember about that disbudding and Taking out those little leaf branches Here are some flowers.

Look visitor When you disbud those side buds it encourages the center one makes it larger Another visitor Just look at all those Dalyas just thousands of them brilliant colors.

It's a beautiful sight to see Well, Lou ought to be down there somewhere amongst them.

Yeah, here he is He's busy tying them up.

He's certainly got a lot of them to tie up there He's got to get home early some He's just got to get home early Saturday afternoon and tie up his Dalyas Look at that.

Isn't that a beautiful one? I Think Lou sneaks off during the week a couple of times too.

Well, here's a typical cloth house This is Jesse Strauss.

He's been a Dalyas grower many years and Of course with the cloth house that helps shade the Dalyas and keeps off many of the insects it gives them protection but with the newer insecticides that we have these days cloth houses aren't as Necessary not used as much as before Here's Frank Goswiler with his patented pile driver or I guess it isn't patented but it's a good idea anyway a piece of pipe with a cap over it and he just slams it up and down drives the stakes in and he uses all the old lampshades he can get and Ties them up over his Dalyas to protect them from the hot sun Particularly when he's going to enter them in a Dalyas show Here's a bushel basket upside down that makes good protection keeps off the heavy driving rain and a thunderstorm And the very hot sun of course old umbrellas Well Frank's backyard is quite a sight in the Dalyas season But Frank certainly won a lot of prizes He's entered his Dalyas and many of the Dalyas shows and Gonna show you man.

Just a minute here.

Well, here he is.

Are those some beauties? Bet some of those would take a ribbon or two And he certainly won a ribbon or two in the past Look at these few cups also Frank Goswiler is one of the outstanding Dalyas grows.

Well, that's enough I guess Let's have a look at a time -lapse picture of a Dalyas growing He just doesn't want to stand still Keeps moving back and forth there, but It's interesting to watch it open and notice the development that of course as I've told you many times is just a normal growth and development of Flowers that motion there's no wind at all.

It's blowing them He's got a little bit of a Desirable quality in a Dalyas to have it kind of raise its head up and face upwards or even upwards a little as it develops you don't want them just hanging down looking at the ground after the flower is fully developed Now I want to give you a little history and background of the Dalyas the Dalyas was originally found First in Mexico, that's where it's native and it was growing there It was grown by well by the Aztec Indians even before the time of Cortez who conquered Mexico back in 1519 Well King Philip second of Spain sent Dr.

Francisco Hernandez who was a naturalist and a botanist in 1570 over to Mexico to study the Natural resources and also the various plants that were growing there because back in those days they were always looking for new plants for medicinal purposes well, he wrote several books and Mentioned Dalyas.

Those are the first actual written records that we have of Dalyas But he didn't bring any seeds back with him to Spain and the first seeds were brought back from Mexico Oh, they were sent from the botanical garden in Mexico over to the royal gardens of Madrid in fifth no in 1789 and the Dalyas was named then by Well, it was named after a pupil of Linnaeus who was one of the very famous botanists and this fellow is this pupil's name And he was a Swedish fellow Andreas Dahl and he had done a lot of work and experimenting and developing Dalyas and they they named it after him Well, it was not until about nine.

No 1840 that the Dalyas really became popular in Europe and the first records of it in United States were back in 1921 But even though there was such an interest in Dalyas the first Dalyas Society was the American Dalyas Society formed in 1915 and the Central States Dalyas Society was formed in 1932 Well, I'm going to show you how to divide a Dalyas tumor and tell you about Digging your Dalyas and storing them for the winter.

But right now here's another important word for you I Think I forgot to mention About the Aztec name for a Dalyas and you see on this large flower curse Well, this is true with all the Dalyas The stem is hollow and the Aztec name for it was a cockly if that's the way you pronounce it But it meant water pipe because it's hollow all the way up and well, it's it resembles the water pipe Now to clear some of this stuff off It's stuck to the table And I've got these tubers that I want to show you Tell you how to cut them How to divide them? Of course the time to divide them is in the spring, but let me get these out anyway and I want to tell you about storing them for the winter Before I tell you about dividing them, which of course has to be done in the spring let me just Say a word about digging them and the proper time to take them well, you can leave the tubers in the ground right up till the first frost the important thing is to get them out of the ground before the ground freezes and I think most people will leave them just until the top stems are Killed down by the frost and then the best way is to take a spade or even preferably a spade fork and If this is your stem up right up here coming through the ground I want to be sure to dig far enough away so that you don't run the spade right down and cut all your tubers in half and a spade fork you can get down and just raise that up out of the ground the way you dig potatoes that is if you've ever dug potatoes and Be careful that you don't cut any of these tubers off then Pardon me set them aside to dry off and clean them up get all the dirt off of them And here you'll notice the the original or mother tubers that was planted Last spring and from which all these other tubers are formed.

Well now this mother tuber will not produce any more Flowers and should be discarded so we'll just cut that right out of there And you'll notice that these shears are long and narrow have long narrow blades on them but you can get in between here and Make that cut and then sort of break it out now some Well different there are different varieties of course of dahlias some will have big thick tubers like this and Some varieties will have a long slender type so don't be surprised if your tubers are long and slender It doesn't mean that they're not good if they're not big and thick like a potato Well, then you want to divide these in the spring and of course during the winter You've got to store them down in the basement some people wrap them up in newspaper some people put them in dry sand or this expanded mica and The idea well you can even use sawdust You want to keep them dry and keep them cool if you've got a room down the basement where the temperature will stay about 45 well, that's just about ideal 45 to 50 and then next spring when you get them out you want to look them over carefully and study them and Any of these little bits of things like that you might as well just cut those right off and during the wintertime They an eye will form right at the top of each of these tubers and when you divide them you may want to use a knife along with the shears and the important thing is to Get a part of the crown together with a tuber And an eye on it so that you've got a full tuber and then a little part of the crown and there should be an eye Right in there.

Now if you take and cut off another one Well, let's just cut one off over here because this has a nice big crown and we'll just cut in there and There's a there is a perfect one We don't need quite so much of the crown there and you'll cut that off depending on just where the eye is Then you plant that just as you saw Lou West do it there when I showed you those pictures.

I Think that'll give you some idea at least of how to plant your dahlias and how to take care of them now and Well right now here's another word of interest for you I'm sure you'll agree with me that Dahlia's are certainly one of the most beautiful flowers that they have and Is certainly a great deal of interest in them I have a copy of the publication put out by the Central States Dahlia Society they call it the Dahlia and On the back page they've devoted the entire back side of the or inside of the back cover To listing the some of the most beautiful flowers in the world Important Dahlia shows that are being held around the country they're just a great number of Dahlia shows being held all around this time of the year and If you haven't already planned to do so, why don't you stop in and see the Dahlia show? That's probably going to be held in your own locality I'm sure you'd enjoy it and you can talk to some of the Dahlia growers there and get all kinds of hints from them To just what they do to get some of these great big blooms if you're interested in growing some of those real big ones and then to why don't you join one of the Dahlia societies because well then you'll get the Publication that they put out and all kinds of helpful information Keeps you up to date on the latest developments of the new varieties Well, you'll get to know some of these people more intimately and know more about them so Let me really Seriously urge you to Stop in and see the Dahlia show that's nearest you and then don't forget though to come around again for our next regular Get together and I'll be looking forward to seeing you You