This pdf below seems very informative and interesting. Seems to suggest debudding most of the lateral buds and even says show growers debranch dinner plate varieties as they only want a handful of blooms.
In a garden environment, I would have thought most people want number of flowers rather than size of flowers. I have never felt the need to disbud, just feed and water copiously, so all the buds flower.
How can you lie there and think of England When you don't even know who's in the team
A good resource. I didn't know it was called "grooming". Slightly creepy. I think the principle holds that the fewer flowers you are trying to grow the more energy they will each get. But you don't want to take off too many leaves, as that is where the plant gets its energy.
It might be interesting to track how long your flowers takes to get from tiny nascent bud to full bloom.
In a garden environment, I would have thought most people want number of flowers rather than size of flowers. I have never felt the need to disbud, just feed and water copiously, so all the buds flower.
Yes definitely better to have loads of good flowers rather than a few perfect ones but I think with my plant having over 60 for a dinner plate variety I don’t think many will bloom at all if I just leave it.
In a garden environment, I would have thought most people want number of flowers rather than size of flowers. I have never felt the need to disbud, just feed and water copiously, so all the buds flower.
@punkdoc Alfie's plant is struggling and not flowering, so we are exploring if disbudding and reducing the stems might help to get some blooms before the end of this season. It's a big plant in a small spot.
Went to Anglesey Abbey dahlia gardens which are stunning. They had a few plants which had tons of buds but only a few flowers which was interesting:
Most of them were stunning though.
I thought I had seen dinner plates until I saw some of these ones here which were over 30cm across. Highly recommend to any dahlia lovers visiting or living close the this national trust.
@Fire I saw a man pruning and maintaining the dahlias and was tempted to ask him if he was the dahlia groomer 😂
Just to jump in about dahlias here if you don’t mind ,I found a bloom on my Bishop Llandaff today that has a flower each side of the stalk ,sort of back to back as it were .Have you ever had that ? Can’t take a piccy only got an iPad and it doesn’t load .
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I have never felt the need to disbud, just feed and water copiously, so all the buds flower.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
@punkdoc Alfie's plant is struggling and not flowering, so we are exploring if disbudding and reducing the stems might help to get some blooms before the end of this season. It's a big plant in a small spot.