I'm wondering if anyone else has bought any of these Happy Days dahlias. They come in various very bright colours with dark purple foliage. I googled them and found they were sometimes described as annuals and sometimes as tuberous perennials. As I have dug them up with a ball of soil to put them in a pot whilest still in flower, I'm wondering if there are some tubers hiding in that soil. Are there usually roots at the bottom ends of tubers?
Tubers are basically swollen roots which act as a food store, so the unswollen ends of the roots look just like normal plant roots. I grow all my dahlias from seed each year and they all produce tubers, but late-sown ones may not have time to produce large enough tubers to survive the Winter by the time the frosts come. Regular dead-heading will encourage tuber formation as if seeds are allowed to form the plant may decide to put all of its energy into those instead - plants do whatever is most efficient in order to reproduce or survive.
A trowel in the hand is worth a thousand lost under a bush.
I asked about water as tubers are 95% water, hence they are not frost hardy. I have grown similar small Dahlia (Bishop of Llandaff) from seed and they had small thich roots rather than tubers in their first year - they were difficult to overwinter and restart. I did notice that the seedlings with most water had the thickest roots/tubers.
I leave my dahlias in the ground in winter and most survive. Arabian nights, Park Princess, Bishop's Children (that I grew from seed) and some others even survived the year it was -17°! Pooh and the others I planted last year (forgotten names) all survived -10°. I live in Dordogne, winters are usually colder than in UK, last winter and spring were very wet, but years of manure and limestone rock under the earth mean my beds are well drained, although it was clay to start with.
Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
I received a pot of dahlias for Mothers Day. Lovely, but the stems started rotting...leaves turned yellow and dried. I decided to move them into my garden in August to try and save them. Any suggestions or advice about what went wrong. They did not have any tubers formed!!
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Have you kept them well watered?
Yes Blairs, I have.
I'm wondering if anyone else has bought any of these Happy Days dahlias. They come in various very bright colours with dark purple foliage. I googled them and found they were sometimes described as annuals and sometimes as tuberous perennials. As I have dug them up with a ball of soil to put them in a pot whilest still in flower, I'm wondering if there are some tubers hiding in that soil. Are there usually roots at the bottom ends of tubers?
Tubers are basically swollen roots which act as a food store, so the unswollen ends of the roots look just like normal plant roots. I grow all my dahlias from seed each year and they all produce tubers, but late-sown ones may not have time to produce large enough tubers to survive the Winter by the time the frosts come. Regular dead-heading will encourage tuber formation as if seeds are allowed to form the plant may decide to put all of its energy into those instead - plants do whatever is most efficient in order to reproduce or survive.
I asked about water as tubers are 95% water, hence they are not frost hardy. I have grown similar small Dahlia (Bishop of Llandaff) from seed and they had small thich roots rather than tubers in their first year - they were difficult to overwinter and restart. I did notice that the seedlings with most water had the thickest roots/tubers.
I leave my dahlias in the ground in winter and most survive. Arabian nights, Park Princess, Bishop's Children (that I grew from seed) and some others even survived the year it was -17°! Pooh and the others I planted last year (forgotten names) all survived -10°. I live in Dordogne, winters are usually colder than in UK, last winter and spring were very wet, but years of manure and limestone rock under the earth mean my beds are well drained, although it was clay to start with.
I received a pot of dahlias for Mothers Day. Lovely, but the stems started rotting...leaves turned yellow and dried. I decided to move them into my garden in August to try and save them. Any suggestions or advice about what went wrong. They did not have any tubers formed!!
It sounds as if they'd been forced into flower very early ... How are they doing now?
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.