If you read my question u will notice that I have the same thing. Huge leaves which I forgot to mention. Never had leaves so big. I just don't think it is N as I don't use much. I don't know what you weather has been like. I am in MA. and June was just rain and cold.

I live in Massachusetts and against everyone's advice, I planted dahlias that I began in Feb-Mar in the garden on mother's day weekend. They had been out on the porch for two week before that, including a couple nights in the mid 30s. I had frost protector covers available in case we had a hard frost. The two to three weeks before the June weather seemed to do the trick. I have had hundreds of blossoms on everything from my border dahlias to larger ones like Lavender Perfection, Kelvin Floodlight and Ace Summer Sunset. We have so many flowers that I have been given bouquets away. . .

The dahlias were easy to start inside with a metal halide lamp that mimics natural sunshine and which focuses on producing green plants, not flowers. That meant the plants were already very strong when I placed them outside. Some, like Arabian Nights, were three feet tall by Mother's Day when I planted them.

There were a few that I planted in the garden as tubers and these are way behind.

ceh2101, it sounds like they were out in June when we had allthat rain and cold? Did you cover them during that?

Hi pdshop, I did not cover them in the rain. If you look at the June night lows, which you can find on weather.com, there was no frost or even close to a frost, at least here on the South Shore of Massachusetts. Since the plants had been so well established in my house, many already had thick, non floppy main stem that I thought could withstand the cold especially since they had spent so much time hardening off. This is completely different from planting a tuber or a small plant that is ultra-sensitive to the cold.

For an established plant, the risk with the cold is a hard frost - sustained temperatures of 28 degrees or less. That kind of frost will kill established dahlias. Our average last hard frost date is in late April, so I just followed the weather closely and planted the dahlias as soon as I thought reasonable.

There is a lot of confusion about dahlias and temperature. Dahlias have heat requirements to break their dormancy, which are quite high. Most people talk about 60 degrees. But once you have a dahlia going and it is strong and healthy and hardened off, then you need a hard frost to kill it.

This worked in part because although we had a cold June, we had a warmer April and May, especially in terms of night temperatures, than usual. It also only worked because I monitored the 10-day weather forecast on weather.com all the time and was prepared to wet and cover the dahlias in case of frost.

There were a few tubers that I planted in June and these are not doing anywhere near as well as the others.

All this said, golf-ball sized hail damaged some of the leaves.

FWIW, the best advice I have been given regarding soil and dahlias is to use whatever fertilizer you'd use on Tomatos. Jobe's make tomato spikes, and I've used them and the plants have always flourished.

Cheers,
Russ

Well, I have put down some Tomato Fertilizer today, we will see how it goes! Keeping my fingers crossed. I do have some buds, one looks ready to open! I suspect some of my dahlias will not get a chance to flower this year, perhaps I put them too far back and in the shade, but I have at least 5 that "should" flower in the next week or so, and all my mini singles should flower soon too... We shall see, keeping my fingers crossed!

Thanks for the advise, and glad to hear I am not the only one having problems this year! I was raking leaves today, this is getting ridiculous!

ceh2101 Thanks for the info. You are almost in another zone on the South Shore. My friend in Marion has flowers way before I do. I didn't know about the temp for dahlias after they eye up. I will be more aggressive next year in getting them in. Will investigate lights as well as I have the perfect cellar but don't know what to buy to start plants indoors.