Sounds like you're doing many things right. How many hours of sun do you think they get daily? What did you use for fertilizer, if anything? And do you see any buds forming at all?

Be patient. Some varieties take a long time to bloom. But once they start producing buds, the show is soon on for the season!

Here is a link that might be useful: leafminer info

Poochella to the rescue again! I used horse manure to amend prior to planting, and then added a 10-10-10, and have bought tomato spikes for next week or two (the 10-10-10 said to reapply every month, so I'm waiting for it's month to be up). I haven't seen ANY buds form, so hopefully these just take a while. I think there's about 4 hours of sun. Here is a closeup of the damage from some kind of pest...

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It's the light colored "figure eight" near the center of the photo, sorry for the bad pic, camera phone. The leaves look blotchy in the photo, they don't look that way in real life.

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This is part of the dahlia patch...this photo was taken just after dawn yesterday.

A lot depends on the variety of the Dahlia. If these are supposed to be 5' tall, or have really large flowers, its not surprising that they've put on so much growth with buds.

Cheers,
Russ

Thanks Russ, I have Hulin's Carnival, Maarn, Rebecca Lynn, Cornell, Chilson's Pride, Kathy G, and four others that I lost the names of...I didn't label them unfortunately...I won't know which is which till they bloom :) I do know that there are no dinnerplates. As a newbie, I had no idea how many varieties there were...I've learned a lot on this forum, and the dahlias will definitely be planned out a little better next year. After seeing posts and pics from Poochella, Plantlady, Sturgeonguy, VikingCraftsmen, you, and many others, I have a better idea of what to do.

I'll keep patiently watching for buds...