This is a true travesty, but it was not unexpected… Dahlias are a tropical flower that can be either vining or a fairly short flower to be used in a bedding situation. The seed package said that they can flower within 70 days. We started the seeds in early September and planted them about three weeks later, and they looked like this. Here are the dahlias a few weeks later. It was interesting to see the difference between all of the seedlings. The seeds that I got were called a “hybrid mix”, and they were serious about the “mix”! If your curious, the white stuff is an organic rose food fertilizer mix. It has plenty of phosphorus and potassium to make the dahlias flower and make big roots! The plants were growing great! In fact at least 5 had huge flower buds on them, and they were about to bloom. Then, November 13th, 14th, and 15th happened… We tried our best to protect the dahlias, and you can see our efforts down below. But for three nights it dipped below the freezing point, getting down to 28.2 degrees on the 14th. Remember when I said that dahlias were tropical? Well it showed when I took off the cover. R.I.P. dahlias... I tried. A new hope...
Dahlias are like potatoes- the make tubers to store energy. The tubers didn't freeze and they did exactly what I was hoping for! You can see in the picture below, they are coming back! My hope is their metabolism slows down over winter and that they don't expend too much energy on growth until it stops freezing. Maybe I will provide a little "Darwinism" and allow only the strong to survive. Come visit the farm in the spring to see if they survived!
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AuthorI'm a Biological and Agricultural Engineering student that is adding on a Horticulture minor to indulge my inner plant geek! Archives
December 2018
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