What dahlias am I growing this year?

[Music] hello everyone okay so i don't know what the weather is like in your part of the world but right now in mine it is very cold and very wintry so today we're going to talk about dahlias and not only because they will brighten up kind of a winter day but because if you want to grow specific kinds of dahlias this year you're going to want to be shopping for those probably now or very soon so if you are new here my name is erin here on the inpatient gardener we talk about inspiration education for real-life gardeners like i am and probably like you are too i live in a zone five southeastern wisconsin but much of the information i have applies to a much broader range of areas than that okay let's get right into dahlia talk so first of all i'll just put out a couple of caveats here the first thing i want to say is that any dahlia is a lovely flower and i think almost all of them are worthwhile plants to grow and so if you don't want to get heavy into dahlias and start picking specific varieties and really getting into kind of a dahlia obsession like i have feel free to just go to your local garden center even some big box stores often have dahlia collections or specific dahlias there once we're into spring so you can do that then too you don't have to feel obligated to order a whole bunch of specific dahlias my guess is once you do that once you will want to order a whole bunch of specific dahlias because dahlias have a way of sucking you in and you want to try them all you can also grow dahlias from seed the thing to know when you grow dahlias from seed which i did last year for the very first time they grow pretty easily from seed i started them ahead of time inside and then planted them out because they do take a while to get going but the main thing to know about when you grow dailies from seed is that you won't get a specific variety so when you buy seeds at whatever seed place you're buying from it will probably have a general theme too it'll probably be like a butterfly mix and it'll be a whole bunch of single dahlias in a variety of colors that's because dahlias cross very easily so the seed unless it's grown in a place where they are restricted and pollinators can't get from any plant to another you're not sure what you're going to get which is very fun by the way it was really exciting last year when i grew dahlias from seed to see what popped up it was super fun and i actually saved one of the tubers that came out of those seed grown dahlias last year and that's the other thing seed grown dahlias typically will produce tubers which you can save if you want that exact same flower because when you grow dahlias from a tuber or from a cutting you are getting a clone of that plant so what i'm sharing with you today is all the varieties that i'm personally going to grow this year these are ones that i've saved or have already purchased new for delivery in april so before we get into varieties i just want to quickly talk about dahlia sources and the great news is is that there's so many places sell between small and big selling dahlias now that it's much easier to find a wider variety of types of dahlias which is great for those of us who really want to get something interesting i typically start my dahlia buying at longfield gardens now i do work with longfield gardens sometimes but i want you to know that that partnership let out of me being a long time customer of long field gardens and the reason i started longfield gardens is that they do a nice balance of having really nice tubers at a relatively reasonable price now i have paid up to 25 for a single dahlia before um but that's obviously not what i like to do for most of my dailies especially when you see how long this list is so price is obviously a factor they also have a pretty broad selection and in most cases they package their dahlias in threes which is really nice because honestly the only time i ever buy a single dahlia tuber of one variety is if i'm either trying it out for the first time and i want to see if i like it or if it's so expensive that the only way i really feel good about doing it is to buy a single one save the tubers and divide them and get more down the line after that then i tend to go to some of the smaller dahlia farms to buy my tubers i'll put a whole list of them below there are more and more and more each day so i'm certain i'm going to miss some really great ones and every day i find new ones you can also look at swan island daily as they are a very large delicary very nice deal is a huge selection and apparently they have an open day where you can go to their garden and apparently it's absolutely spectacular so i probably need to make it a point to get to there so those are sort of the main places that i shop from again check the description for some links to some of these do keep in mind though that a lot of the smaller growers have a very limited number of what they can sell in most cases when they open up their dahlia sale they sell out within hours or at least in that first day so just know that going in so you don't get disappointed and my last tip for you is if you are looking for a specific dahlia there is a website called dahlia addicts and dahlia addicts is a clearing house for dahlia varieties and basically sellers can go into daily addicts put their varieties into there and then it will list them so you can search by variety and see all of the places that are selling that dahlia who have at least told dahlia addicts about it and that is a great way to find a variety that you really have your heart set on and we're going to get to one of those that i am hunting down okay enough of that let's get into the varieties i'm growing this year we're going to go shortest to tallest and i'm doing that because i find that shorter dahlias are much easier for me to work into my garden as a garden plant rather than a standalone area and i prefer to grow my dahlias right in the middle of of all of it so i'm around them all the time i do have a couple of places where i grow very tall varieties and i'll do have a little bit of room in my vegetable garden to just grow a couple that maybe aren't going to fit somewhere else and that would be mostly for cutting purposes as we go along here i will share the technical classification of that flower if i know it i'm not very good at those classifications and that's mostly because i don't show dahlias those are typically used when you show a dahlia there are certain classes that you enter in and i don't grow dahlias competitively i just grow them because i love them the first two i want to share with you are new to me they're from a series called melody it's 24 inches tall i'm very excited about these because i find there is a shorter series of dahlias called the gallery series which tends to be like 14 inches tall and i find that to be quite short for in the garden very good for containers but quite short for the garden so this to me this 24 inch tall seems really nice for the front of the border the first one is melody swing this is an apricot gold it's a kind of got pointy petals and it looks like it's more gold in the center in the picture and kind of salmony color on the edges right up my alley and the next one is called melody pink allegro this is sort of an informal decorative one and they claim that this has four inch flowers on it which is mind boggling to me that there's gonna be a four inch flower on a 24 inch tall plant but that will be spectacular this is all shades of pink uh light to bright pink basically next up is milena floor this is salmon with yellow centers and very noticeably different it's not like it blends it's like it's yellow and then it's salmon quite interesting looking on that one too that one is going to be in now you're talking 24 to 30 inches tall on that next up is another new one to me this is called rebecca lynn it's a bright fuchsia ball dahlia small ball two and a half inches so a little bit bigger than what would be classified as a pom pom dahlia but still quite small 24 to 30 inches tall and i'm growing this one not because i necessarily love that super bright pink color but because i think it will go really well in both bouquets and the garden because it'll add a little bit of variety size-wise a lot of the dahlias that i grow are in that three to four inch wide flower size and so even though they all are different colors and different shapes they tend to sort of blend in i think so i think this will add a nice little punctuation both in the garden and bouquets next up is possibly my favorite dahlia and i would say if i have a signature dahlia it's this one it's called crichton honey if you guys have followed me it's the you know i talk about this dahlia all the time it is the dahlia that's uh the header on the youtube page it's it's everywhere and i love creighton honey crayon honey is a nicely sized ball dahlia it's about 30 inches tall so usually sometimes it gets a touch taller than that but usually i can get away with just a very minimal steak right at the bottom it just to kind of keep it in the general right direction no big rigs required for that one and the colors it's a nice tight ball colors vary from a very light yellow to a dark salmon and what's interesting is that the colors change quite a bit depending on how much light it's getting and depending on the time of year so i find that it tends to get very light yellow in fall and sort of hot summer you might be seeing that really dark salmon but most of the time what it is is a variation of the two of them um it just looks like a tropical sunset to me i adore that dahlia so those are all it's a hard daily to find i don't know why i will be using all the ones that i have stored for many years for that and i like to grow those i like that one so much that i tend to plant five or six of those right at the front of the border and the way the sun catches them in the morning so good next up another favorite of mine hs date this is probably my favorite single dahlia the single dailies should not be overlooked i tell people this all the time they are gorgeous they don't look like a dahlia in terms of what you might envision in your head for adelia but we're talking 30 inches tall no staking needed and the best thing about them is they have super dark foliage very dark olive to almost blackish purple foliage so they're really good garden plant because even when they're not blooming early in the year before they start to bloom you get that nice foliage accent in your garden that's part of this hs series hs stands for happy single i have another one called i think first kiss it's very similar it's a little bit more apricotty i i don't think you can go wrong with any from that series it's really excellent next up and new to me this year is a another ball dahlia this is still we're still short here this we're talking 30 to 36 inches tall on this one and it's described as a primrose yellow i sort of think of it as kind of a sunshine yellow but it's a pale yellow most gardeners i think are wary of yellow because sometimes if it's very gold it doesn't necessarily go with what else is in your garden i feel like this is one of those yellows that's going to blend well with everything else and it's a ball dahlia probably my favorite form of dahlia at least for the moment and so i just can't get enough of those next up and coming in at three feet tall is another new to me cactus dahlia this one's called um cactus temboro this is apparently a replacement for okay i'm going to get the heat now because every time i say the name this dahlia all the people who speak way better french than i do come after me nui data it's a replacement for that at least that's how it's listed on the long field site as a replacement for that it's similar it's a dark dark dark burgundy cactus dahlia i think it's really important to even though i tend to favor the apricot peach range of colors or orange range of colors i think it's really important to bring in some dark dahlias the thing i love about this is it's not even three feet tall so i feel like it's going to be much easier to work into the main part of the garden nui data was tall really for me very tall and difficult to work in next up brown sugar another ball dahlia you will find me talking a lot about ball dailies here i do love them uh three feet tall described as rusty coppery orange it's there's like almost brown tones in there it's a very fall toned color um one of those colors that i think is going to look really neat and it's a nice tight ball really tight petals perfectly firm ball and then coming in at 36 inches is a repeat from last year zundar mystery fox and called that because it changes colors and it's almost impossible to describe the color generally speaking it kind of developed for me last year as a kind of a burnt orange but sometimes went uh quite quite bright pink on some of the petals very interesting nice ball i really enjoyed working that into bouquets last year it bloomed really well interesting enough to redo for sure okay this next group is now we're getting into you're going to have to stake a territory we're generally between 36 and 40 inches on most of these so again you're not going to need a really heavy duty stake but you are going to have to plan on staking these but still very good for working into a garden because they will hold up on top of a lot of other plants first up is uh bloon quest dave the bloom quest series is a really beautiful series that i've not grown before bred by a person called paul bloomquist bloomquist dave is kind of a coral color it's considered an informal ball and it has sort of a goldy yellow center i mean i see this in the pictures as veering way more towards the salmony pink side of things but i fell in love with it in a big bouquet so now it's going to be mine bloom quiz dreamer is part of that same series as well this is a semi-cactus and i think i'm you'll notice there's a few cactuses in my group more than i've grown in the past and i'm doing that because i think with so many dahlias i really need to get some texture variation and the cactuses are interesting to me this is a 36 to 48 this is on dreamer and it's considered it's called golden peach again yellow center going out to a salmon color on the edges in the pictures anyway castle drive is 36 to 48 inches tall and this is one that i saw over instagram last year and sort of made a mental note that i needed to get that this is described as light pink to blush i think it i think you can think of this as similar colors to cafe olay and blend in quite well with with cafe au lait next up is kind of an interesting one again new to me this is fairway spur this is a huge flower dahlia but it only grows three to four feet tall which is unusual typically the really big ones tend to be quite tall so this is really going to be interesting to work into the garden i describe this color in the photos as mango peach a solid color throughout and really nice twisty petals i think it could be very fun to grow this one and experiment with this one next up is a variety i've been trying to get my hands on for about three years and i finally got it ordered this year it is called apple blossom it's a colorette type which means it has single petals with kind of fluffy bits in the middle it's so pretty i learned about this one from floret flowers i bet you that's where most people discovered this one and probably why it's as hot as it is it's exactly the color that you would think a dahlia that is named apple blossom would be it's you know light yellow with a little bit of pink and pink in it maybe a little bit of peach in it the only issue with this one is that it's 40 to 48 inches tall and i really wish it was shorter because this is one i would love to have front and center in the garden but at that height it's going to have to be back a little farther hopefully it will produce a lot of flowers a lot of the singles and colorats are very floriferous so they really keep going all year so hopefully this one will produce a whole bunch of flowers for me so labyrinth is adelia that i stumbled upon maybe four or five years ago i was coming off of a love affair with cafe olay and had thought i would never find another dahlia that i liked as much as that one and then came along labyrinth and i described the colors and the sort of shape of labyrinth as being sort of like cafe olay but where someone just turned up the saturation on it it is beautiful bright vibrant pink and coral color a little bit of twisty petal on it and i'm telling you it is such a statement it is such a looker it gets about 40 inches tall in my garden maybe 36 to 40 so actually doesn't need a ton of staking structure but it definitely needs some it's actually too short for me to grow with some of my really tall growing ones because it just looks odd in that mix so i have to mix it in elsewhere in the garden it's a lot of look you're definitely going to want to place it carefully because the colors are really vibrant linda's baby is about 40 inches tall and this is one that i've grown for the last two years i will grow it again it's a lovely ball it is very similar in color to crichton honey when creighton honey has its more coral or salmon colors going on i think it actually probably is a better looking flower than creighton honey during that period it's got a little bit tighter ball on it but it's taller it's 40 inches so that's why i tend to lean more towards crite and honey because crichton honey doesn't necessarily need to be staked and linda's baby definitely does cream to cognac which is a great name is a decorative dahlia it's peach butterscotch and copper is how the colors are described on this i mean when i look at it i definitely see peach and then i see kind of a dark underside to it i think it's really cool it's kind of a bi-color looking one to me new to me this year and that's going to get 40 inches tall okay now we're into the next section this is basically the four foot range one of these gets up a little taller than that but generally you're looking at four feet for this next bunch here first is rose toscano this is a dusty rose peach i don't see a lot of the rose in it i see a lot of the peach in it but it's a muted dustier color not quite as vibrant as some and it's of course a beautiful ball which is why i fell in love with that after that we've got ferncliff copper fern cliff copper is uh work by the way we're coming into a period here where you're going to see a color theme developing is a soft copper orange that's the description on that one but the description that really got me that i found for it was one that called it sort of creamsicle colors looks almost a little stripey to me very light sort of peachy orange moving into kind of a dark center raspberry colored center that one looks looks quite pretty and that one is considered a formal dahlia we've got two from the jowy series here every one of the dahlias i've grown from the joey series has been really good in the past i've grown joey marella it's a dark ball it's really fabulous i am not going to grow that again this year i decided to swap out to try that dark cactus and i just can't grow them all but that's a great one too all these joey series though are in the you know they're they're pushing four feet in most cases sometimes it's 40 inches to four feet but they're they're taller joey winnie is one that i grew last year now it's described as sort of a raspberry peach ball i grew it in kind of a shadier spot last year and it was very much a clear pink i i'm going to say pepto-bismol pink maybe which isn't the most flattering description so when i showed a picture of it last year i had a lot of people come to me and argue that that was not it i am telling you that was absolutely it it was just growing in a spot where it wasn't in full sun and so that's another thing to consider is that these colors you know they might not always be true to what you see in the photos and that could be the circumstance in which they're growing after that we've got joey nicky this is uh new this year this is an apricot peach ball all of those are great balls nice tight balls on those platinum blonde i grew last year this is an anemone type i hope that this tuber holds i grew one last year the tuber was quite weak and it grew produced two flowers but they were really cool it's white flowers with a fluffy light yellow pom pom in the middle uh it's a fabulous flower i wish it weren't four feet tall it would be the perfect dahlia to me if they could get that to 30 inches tall because it's really fun so if the tuber that i grew last year that i saved i only got one out of it over winter as well i'll be growing that one again one of the series of dahlias that i've gotten really into in the past two years is a series bred by kristen albrecht you can follow her on instagram at santa cruz dahlias she's doing some really great breeding i think she breeds mostly for cut flower people and the show bench that doesn't matter you can grow any dahlia you want no matter what the breeder was intending i'm sure they'd be i think every breeder be more than happy to see their delis in anyone's regular old garden so uh they're very interesting i have to buy these the only place i can find these when they come out is from a place called stonehouse dahlias that sells rooted cuttings grew them last year from rooted cuttings the plants grew fabulously performed wonderfully unfortunately of the four that i grew from rooted cuttings only one produced savable tubers i don't know how that worked and i don't know what happened exactly but only one of them uh produced a tuber that was even possible to save and because this ka's she's christian albrecht is is you know these are relatively new releases they're just getting out so there is no stock to be able to go buy tubers of these you have to buy them by cuttings because there just aren't any enough tubers out there at this point to go by they're very pricey it's a bit of an investment so first one mocha maya one i really wanted last year i couldn't get it was sold out so i had to swap for something else um just it's an informal decorative it's all sorts of mean i think you can see in the picture it's all sorts of colors there's definitely pinks and yellows and to me again this is very cafe au lait inspired sierra glow is four feet tall and it is a cool dahlia it when i bought it it was wherever i bought it from two years ago it was known as peachy salmon dinner plate because it had not had an official name yet but since then it's been renamed sierra glow big flowers relatively short plant four feet tall for a big big big flower plant and it looks this is uh this is a bright orange sunset with kind of little hints of yellow and pink and little flecks in it and it's a good one and the last one that falls onto this category which is four feet maybe a little over four feet is uh snow no doris a baldalia coral peach apricot you recognize the theme i fell in love with this picture because some dahlia society had a photo contest and the most adorable picture of a frog sitting on snow uh what's it called snoho doris won the contest and the picture was great but the dahlia was fabulous so that's why i bought that one this year next up now we're on to big guys this is stand them up give them a really good steak i grow most of these along the skinny bed on the south side of our house right along the patio i grow if you guys have seen that part of the garden before that's where i grow all the tall ones it's a little easier to manage there because they are protected by the house and i have drip in there so they get consistent water the bigger those really big ones can be fussy they aren't going to produce as many flowers as the smaller ones and they just get a little to me they get a little fussier about things but these are generally where the ones that we know as dinner plate dahlias where i put them because sometimes their heads are very heavy too it's just difficult for me to work those into the garden so that's where i grow most of those first up is islander i ordered two of these which is unusual for me when i'm first trying out adelia this is a giant salmon pink with ruffled petals i think this is going to be a big showy dahlia most of these dahlias that we're getting into here or many of these i should say are going to be giant flowers where like one flower makes a bouquet next up peaches and cream this is a five footer okay consider it a formal decorative i am exclusively buying this one because all the daily people on instagram won't stop talking about how amazing it is i look at the pictures and i'm not sure i actually think it's all that great it's peach and then at the tips uh the petals kind of fade out to white everybody says it's fabulous so i had to decide for myself so that's why i ordered that one i'm pretty sure i bought terra cotta because i was shopping for other i'm pretty sure about this next one which is called terra cotta because i was saw it on the screen and i was shopping and it ended up in the cart considered a semi cactus and it's terracotta colored with kind of a dark center it's described on the floret website as having hints of lavender and purple stems we'll see the thing that really got me about this was everyone says it's an extremely productive dahlia so especially when we get to these taller ones now this is not going to be a particularly big flower in this i think it's like four to five inches but if we're going to get to the thing where i have to deal with a tall dahlia and everything that's involved in that productivity is important to me i want that thing pumping out flowers kamino i keep wanting to say camino but kamino cloud is a really uh buff to very light peach cactus i fell in love with this one i think that form is pretty stellar on that one flowers are said to be four to six inches um wide and you know again we're still in the five foot range here on flowers next one up is another one of kristen albrecht's breedings and this one's called champagne this is a stellar form this is not a term i am familiar with in terms of dahlia classifications but i think in the picture you'll see that it kind of bends around and it's got very fluffy petals i think this is similar very similar in color to the other one i'm getting mocha maya maybe a slightly more pink on it i just like to play around with some of these new and exciting ones okay would any dahlia discussion be complete without talking about cafe lay i have to say i'm certain cafe la is like the number one dahlia in the country everybody loves it there's a reason everybody loves it it's really good you guys now more than any other dahlia i grow cafe lay changes colors on me and it has a lot to do with how much light it's getting i think it has everything to do with how much light it's getting honestly one year when i had a really good cafe la year i had basically from very light buff to very dark pink and many of these were on the same plant so no with cafe lay there's a range i find too that um as you get later in the season again when the days are shorter and there's less light it tends to go way more towards buff than it does towards pink or any of those other colors it often has these nice little swirly petals in the center and really there's no reason not to grow it it's a great it's a great tell you there's a reason why everybody knows cafe la because it's a fabulous dahlia the next two are part of the penn hills series which i just discovered and quite love the first is penn hill dark monarch this was the first one i had and if i have to pick one of these that's my favorite that's probably it it ranges from orange to pink but the cool thing about the penn hills series is that there's striations on the petals so once you really get in there and look first of all it almost looks like it glimmers but second of all it's a really complex color which i think makes it very easy to work into okay but also just really exciting and interesting the second one is penn hill watermelon this one gets tall in fact one year i grew this and i would say was easily seven feet tall it was huge and the first flower i picked off and now flowers tend to get and some of these big ones the first flower is usually the biggest and then they start getting a little smaller but i measured that first one it was 11 inches across on that very first penn hill waterman flower i got you don't get a lot of flowers but what you get is going to be pretty spectacular breakout is right up there with a favorite for me um again similar colors to cafe la although clearer in color not that sort of not the cafe part of cafe la basically wider petals and flat and it tends to look right out at you some dahlias have a tendency to sort of look down or straight up it tends to hold its flowers almost perpendicular to the stem so they look right out at you wide petals that range from a really nice buttery yellows and maybe even a i would say a lighter yellow than that even let's say whipped butter yellow to a bright pink but clear on muddy colors really a great one and thomas edison which is the i guess you i'm certain you'd call it purple because it is the best purple dahlia i have ever grown i don't grow a lot of purple dahlias obviously you haven't really seen any other ones in here uh but it's fabulous it's a nice big one gets beautiful purple flowers and you know there's something about purple petals on adelia that it truly looks like velvet it just sort of has that sheen to it really lovely so that wraps up my list of dahlias i'm going to grow this year i am going to resist i'm not looking at any more dahlia sites because i clearly have too many the way it is i'm probably actually missing some that i save there are some that just aren't going to make the cut this year i had too many dahlias last year i got about 100 dahlias last year that is too many i would guess i have at least that many here so some things are going to have to get rehomed or i'll have to find a different place to grow some of them but there's one other dahlia that i just wanted to talk about i have been looking for this dahlia for years i found it last year and i ordered it from a very big plant company and the tubers were not good i it did not grow at two tubers they were both duds so i am searching for a better source for this flower it is called waltzing matilda it is a pointy single dahlia with dark foliage kind of in that coral to raspberry color and it is one that every time i see a picture of it i immediately go i have to have that dahlia so i'm going to try again this year to look for it i looked on dahlia addicts there are a few places the one place that has already sold it is sold out there's a few places that have sales coming up in march that i'm going to try to snag it on but that's sort of my wish list dahlia this year everything else i've pretty much managed to get or decided i can do without this year but that's one i would really like to add to my garden because i think that'd be a great garden plant so i have done a ton of videos on dahlias particularly how i grow them how i store them all of those things i'll put links to a couple of those there but you can always search the channel and just type in dahlias and oodles of videos will come up for you i would say the key thing to know right now is that if you're looking for specific varieties get on ordering them now because you won't be able to find them later or you probably won't be able to find them later one of the beautiful things is that a lot of people are getting into growing dahlias and that's good for you if you are a dahlia grower because a lot more varieties are more available now okay so that's the rundown on the dahlias i'm growing i hope you are having a great day in your garden or maybe just thinking about your garden if you like this video do me a favor give it a like it really does help a lot i appreciate it and i hope you are having a good time dreaming about dahlias today see you soon thanks for watching bye-bye i'll put some links to some of the most commonly asked uh burp

Channel: The Impatient Gardener

Views: 73,810

Keywords: dahlias, dahlia varieites, dahlia varieties, how to grow dahlias, dahlia selection, gardening, growing dahlias, Longfield Gardens, cafe au lait dahlia, plants, flowers, cut flowers, garden

Id: HdTsyiLXzaw

Length: 33min 21sec (2001 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2022