Sigh! My adventures with dahlias are not going as well as they did with my hydrangeas and peonies. I’ll skip most of the drama, but I think I inflicted some damage upon my beautiful cafe au laits and lifestyle anenomes because I was…you guessed it, obsessing over them. I sprayed insecticide on my plants after reading about thrips, which are known to prey on dahlia buds. My dahlias were — are — literally late bloomers. Out of the varieties I planted, only the lifestyles have flowers, and they are a lot smaller than I pictured. Perhaps because I am growing them in a container, they are stressed and therefore undersized? I am not sure. At this point they are too small and fragile to cut - I’d love to let them grow a bit more.

I planted these tubers after a late April frost and prayed that they would make it. Here we are in August and I am only now seeing some mixed results! Some buds are fizzling out before they really unfold, but others are holding up and stretching out toward the sun. I have a feeling that I will need to have an addendum to this post, to hopefully update you with some more dinner-plate looking dahlias! Wish me luck. And grow, little dahlias, grow!

ciao, xo!