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Dinner-plate dahlias will impress fussiest guest

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GARDEN JOURNAL

What could be friendlier than dinner in the garden? And dinner should have flowers, perhaps flowers the size of dinner plates. You can grow this plant with flowers the size of dinner plates, hence their nickname of Dinner-Plate Dahlias.

Native to Mexico, Central America and as far south as Colombia, the dahlia was once grown for edible tubers as well as its beautiful blossoms. In 1787 the French botanist Nicolas-Joseph Thiery de Menonville went to Mexico to steal the cochineal insect valued for its scarlet dye, and noted the unusually beautiful blooms. Finally they made their way to Europe and in October 1789, plants grown from seeds from Mexico City bloomed in Madrid, Spain. In a gentlemanly act, the head of the Madrid Botanical Garden, Antonio Jose Cavanilles, named the flowers not for himself but for the famed Swedish botanist, Anders Dahl and with a nod to the mission of finding cochineal bugs, the chosen Latin name for dahlias would be "Dahlia coc-cinea."

Dinner plate dahlia blooms will really cover a dinner plate, with blossoms anywhere from eight inches across to over 10 inches across depending on the variety. The flowers come in all shades from the popular bright yellow Kelvin Floodlight to orange colored Babylon Bronze. There are even multicolored and striped dinner-plate dahlias., such as Bristol Stripe which is white with and purple and magenta striping.

In dahlia garden beds, broad sweeps or masses of just a few colors provide the most impact. You can place dinner-plate dahlias at the back of a sunny garden or mixed in with the vegetables for a fairytale look. If you are growing strictly for cutting then you can plant in rows.

For best results plant your dinner-plate dahlias in rich, well-drained soil in full sunlight after all danger of frost in the spring.

Dig the soil down to about 14 inches or build raised beds if your soil is shallow or rocky.

Choose a spot where they will receive at least eight hours of direct sunlight.

Shade will make them grow lanky with few blooms. You may need to stake the plants once they reach a few feet high

To get one super-huge blossom from a dinner plate dahlia you may want to remove all but a single flower bud. Choose the most promising bud when it is about the size of a pea. Pinch off all of the other flower buds. It takes four to five weeks for the bud to reach full size.

Slugs and snails can be serious pests, but can be destroyed by placing shallow pans of beer out at night. They will climb in and drown happy.

Cool mornings or early evenings when the plants have the most stored carbohydrates or sugars are best times for cutting dinner-plate dahlia blooms. For longer vase life remove most of the foliage.

Since dinner-plate dahlias' ancestors are from the tropics, they are killed by sub-zero temperatures. Luckily, they store nutrition in their tubers which enables them to survive periods of dormancy. So you can easily lift the tubers from the ground and store them in a cool, dark spot over the winter to replant next year.

The longer you let the tubers stay in the ground curing, the more fully developed the tubers will be, and they will survive winter storage better.

Let the first light frost kill the foliage and then carefully dig them.

You can propagate your dinner-plate dahlias by taking stem cuttings and rooting them or dividing the clumps of tubers. These fun to show off huge blossoms that were named out of respect are fitting for any dinner party where you really want to honor a guest. Learn to propagate them and in your own act of friendship you can give dinner plate dahlias and their tubers to friends.





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