Redd, you are so psyched I bet you're taking the temp of your soil already! Counting the days til Spring? It's officially still over 30 days, but more like 60 in our neck of the woods.

Some are naturally early, size is irrelevant. Some catalogs/websites have early bloomers noted. I think it's in the mysterious genes, somehow. Some are so slow to bloom I'm ready to ban them from my garden. No amount of cheering or scolding seems to hurry them; they're on their own schedule.

It's hard to think about planting when the space heater is blaring away in the tuber room of the garage. (But I think about it anyway LOL)

LOL, yes I'm TOTALLY psyched about this spring. Heck it seems like it's going to take FOREVER here for it to actually arrive! We just don't know what mother nature has in store for us. Usually we have heaps and heaps of snow outside and the past couple years it's been getting less and less! May long weekend seems WAAAY to far off. This year (as I mentioned in an earlier post) we're creating a NEW bed in our yard (we don't have much for space so I want to make the best of what we got lol)

I'd say it's going to be 90% Dahlias. Here I thought I wanted strickly Dinner plates, but nope...I have sizes ranging from AA down to dwarfs! I'm sooo pumped! Also we have to rebuild our fence before we do the bed....SOOOOO LOTS to do as soon as the earth is ready!

I've peeked a little bit at my tubers I have stored, but so far not much for action. Give it more time and I'm HOPING to have ones that'll be salvagable. But I still have the 45 new ones I'm getting :)

I must be a total freak! lol I have my front beds mapped out already as to what is going where AND in the new bed!

OH and what other plants look good with the Dahlias? I have some thoughts on what I might like to grow in there, but because all I really know about is the dahlias, I'm working on my other botanicle knowledge (am I sounding smart yet? :-) hehe

Thanks
Nikki~

Anymore input?......anyone? :D

Redd~

I posted this one prior but it wouldn't let me add to my reply. Anyhoo.....does the actual bloom size determine approx how many blooms one might achieve in the end? Example, my Kelvin Headlight got only 3 blooms last summer (possibly due to blooms being so big) and my White Linda got a few more and that plant was smaller than the larger size.

Am I making any sence here? Or am I talking in circles?

Anyhoo...any input? :)

Nikki~

some dahlias are earlier blooming than others, however I have found that the M bb & b sizes generally bloom earlier that the a or aa sizes. Also the m bb & b are more prolific bloomers that the larger ones.

A lot of the AA's are later to bloom but we get around that by starting them indoors to give them a boost.
If you want the truely BIG blooms, you have to keep the AA plant down to 4-6 blooms so you won't get as long a show as you get with the little ones that you can just keep on cutting & they put out more & more. Some of the AA & A's will put out more blooms if you let them but they won't be as big- on the other hand, we won Best AA & Best Triple AA in 4 shows in a row with some Zorro's - all off of only 2 plants!
Just when you think you've got them figured out they do something to show you who's boss!!

I can't wait to get my Zorro! I'm soo pumped! Then again I'm pretty pumped about ALL my new arrivals in spring lol. I know I want to have all my larger ones in the back row, and really most of my new ones are amongst the B and BB class! So it should be really interesting this year :) I'll for sure be posting pics ;)

Nikki~