I’ve got a Thomas Edison which I’ve had for around 4 years and like yours it rarely has more than one or two flowers at a time. They are lovely but sparse. This spring I told it it was going into the compost of it didn’t pull its socks up 🙄
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”—Marcus Tullius Cicero East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham
The pictures are taken in an open field setting, by the looks of it, which is a very different setting from yours. Please don't beat yourself up that your blooms don't like a catalogue.
I would say you may have too much planted in a small trough. The root ball on your large dahlia will be big, and in competition with the smaller plants.
I was just thinking about the Thomas Edison that is large for the bed. I was counting the unopened buds and there are over 60. Since the plant is so large in a small bed would I get more buds flowering if I pruned it to remove some of the stems and unopened buds? It’s so large in terms of spread anyway I could easily reduce the stems and unopened buds by half and still have a large plant.
One approach is to take off smaller side stems and disbud so that you have fewer, larger flowers on long stems. This is what exhibitors and florists do.
One approach is to take off smaller side stems and disbud so that you have fewer, larger flowers on long stems. This is what exhibitors and florists do.
One approach is to take off smaller side stems and disbud so that you have fewer, larger flowers on long stems. This is what exhibitors and florists do.
I think I get the idea from the video. Seems simple enough pulling off small buds but when you have multiple stems branching off that are more established would you still remove them and leave the central one.
So this one that forks off as three remove the circled ones?
And this double stem remove the less established bud stem leaving just the one that’s opening?
I think from the video it seems to say I should do this early on when all the buds are much smaller so will try that too. Thanks.
Yes, I think the idea is to nip off the side shoots as early as possible. But experiment with your plant to see how many stems to take off. Maybe take this year as a trial and learn what works for you.
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This guy grows a lot of dahlias and his beds look equally as good if not better than the catalogue one:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ExwzinP-teU&t=103s
East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham
So this one that forks off as three remove the circled ones?