Walt started yesterday & has all the 2006 seedlings planted & some of the named varieties- altogether about 300 - just a start on the thousands still to go!

i'm also in zone 8 and i planted mine at the beginning of April. did i plant them too early? oopsie!

I just planted mine this week as well ... but I'm up in the Philly suburb area, have I jumped the gun? The clmiate here is TOTALLY different from my homeland (England) and I have to second guess everything.

Mark--

I don't think so. Philadelphia is more mild than southern New York and I usually wait til the second week of May. Good luck.

Hello everyone! plantlady2 you must have a Dahlia farm? Do you sell the tubers? Walt must have helpers? I thought I grew a lot!

tessa74 I planted my tubers in early April last year and had no problem. We have been plagued with a lot of rain here on the west coast and chilly temperatures this year. It is hard to work in the garden when everything is waterlogged. I didn't plant any tubers that did not have an eye this time because it is so annoying to wait for a tuber to grow only to be disappointed. I actually began planting on April 10th. I laid my tubers out into trays on my porch and sprayed them with water every 2nd day to keep them from drying out and checked for eyes then too. As they showed themselves they got planted.

The Dahlia farm gave out new instructions for planting this year. So this year I dug the hole 5" down and placed the tuber in a vertical position. Placed dirt all around the bulb, but left the sprout exposed and uncovered. As the sprout grows, place dirt around it until it is even with the ground around it. This is so much better because you can see the sprout growing instead of wondering if it is growing. I always put an inch of dirt over the tubers before. How do you do it?

mingusalex- Walt doesn't have any help- he's just an amazing worker! As of today he's about 1/2 way through planting- working on the ones we'll introduce next year- the 06, 05, & 04 seedlings are all in & so are the first round of the named A & AA's in the big garden. Some of the seed parents are still in the greenhouse. We grow between 6,000 & 10,000 per year depending on how many seedlings we cull during the year- last year we were especially hard on them & eliminated anything that was lacinated because we were starting to see some split tips in the new babies & we don't want that. We were tired of looking at yellow, gold & light orange, too so we tossed a lot of the ones that were similar-- we had competitions- who's the best of these three gold??? One lived & 2 were cow feed! I think we may have about 1 lac. left just because it was such a nice one that I couldn't bear to throw it away.
Check out our gardens at this site.

Here is a link that might be useful: Wynne's Dahlias Albums

Thank you so much plantlady2! Your Dahlias are magnificent!

Yipeee!!!

My dahlias are now planted. Just came home from wintering in Florida. Checked my tubers and they wintered just fine. Most eyed up nicely. Bought 14 new varities for this season. I have way more than I need and will probably give many away and make someone else a Dahlia lover.. So excited for this season...

Sue

I am also very excited about my dahlias! I planted 46 and I have 41 up and about 6" tall. The next 6 months will be great!