I think the 3 to 5 total shoots is for people growing dahlias for shows - they want their plants to put all their energy into fewer but bigger flowers. For garden use, more but smaller flowers gives a better show so you can leave all the shoots on if you like.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
Sorry to rattle on but I'm trying to suss what I've done wrong. Looks like I'm heading for almost half the cuttings to fail now.
This is the latest cutting whose leaves have flopped (I've cut them in half in desperation now). No suggestion of roots at all.
Looking at the top image that's zoomed in, the area around the leaf nodes doesn't look healthy. When I stripped the lower leaves off a few of them stripped a slight bit down the stem, could this be enough to cause the issues?
Didn't think to bother with a knife at the time as I'd seen videos on this where people just used their hands.
I was down to 4 of the original 12 until today. The final 4 were holding strong, I've been misting the leaves frequently and they've been doing fine until I noticed the leaves starting to sag on one of them.
On the plus side, roots had formed and it appeared to be what I think was a wire worm that had done the damage. The little bastard was still there.
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This is the latest cutting whose leaves have flopped (I've cut them in half in desperation now). No suggestion of roots at all.
Looking at the top image that's zoomed in, the area around the leaf nodes doesn't look healthy. When I stripped the lower leaves off a few of them stripped a slight bit down the stem, could this be enough to cause the issues?
Didn't think to bother with a knife at the time as I'd seen videos on this where people just used their hands.
On the plus side, roots had formed and it appeared to be what I think was a wire worm that had done the damage. The little bastard was still there.