National Chrysanthemum Exhibition, Tokyo, Japan
I recently returned from a vacation to Japan. We went many places but one of my favorites was definitely visiting the Chrysanthemum Exhibition in Tokyo. The exhibit is held in Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden which is right in the middle of Tokyo (think kinda’ like Central Park in NYC). The day we visited was a national holiday (Culture Day in Japan) so the park was packed with tons of picnic visitors. I really loved the fact that so many people choose to spend their day off in a garden!
Early November is Chrysanthemum season in Japan (and here in the Upstate). We actually didn’t grow them on my farm this year and this trip was a big part of the reason why- so if I couldn’t cut my own- Why not go see them in Japan??
The exhibit was set up throughout the garden in shelters so you walked a trail from shelter to shelter to see the different varieties.
It’s hard to capture the scale of the flowers in pictures but many of them were disbudded to be very large- 10-12” in diameter. In the gallery below, I’ve included the description cards that were featured with each exhibit before the flower pictures from that exhibit. It was very impressive to see the precision with which they are grown.
*If you click on a picture, it will pop it up into a light box so you can see it larger.
To Dig or Not To Dig, That is the Question?
Well it’s pretty much that time in most of the country (unless you are really hot)- It’s time to make a decision- Do you dig your Dahlias or leave them in the ground? So let’s talk about a few factors that influence that call:
Normandy Bright Day
Where do you grow? If you are zone 7 or higher you have the choice of dig or not. Zone 6- sometimes has this choice, depends on if you run a warm zone 6. Any colder than that, I would recommend digging unless you really like taking risks!
What are your storage options? Dahlia tubers need 40-50 degrees and 80-90% humidity in storage. Do you have conditions to support this for storing? If not, you may loose some to shrivel, drying out. The temps aren’t that hard to find but the humidity conditions often are hard to come by.
What kind of time do you have now versus in the spring? For us, spring is too busy to be digging and dividing, so we do it in the fall.
Last Dance
My personal recommendations when I’m asked this question are this:
Commercial flower farmer: Dig in fall if you have proper storage conditions. This way you know how many tubers you have for next season. You can also take cuttings early this way.
Home Gardener: Leave tubers in over winter and dig a few weeks before your last frost if you want to divide them. In ground will usually provide better storage conditions than most situations that the home gardener has available to them.
So what are you doing this year? Shoot me an email and let me know!
Who’s Getting the Boot? 2024 Version
Every year I try out many new varieties and grow on others for a second or third time. There’s some winners and some losers- so who’s outta’ here this year? Read on…..
Brookside Cheri
Brookside Cheri- This was a hard decision. I grew it side by side with Hilltop Lost Treasure (see below pic). They are very similar in coloring. Cheri is more pink and Lost Treasure is coral fading to salmon pink. But I think Lost Treasure gives me more blooms and has a bit sturdier stem.
Hilltop Lost Treasure (left) and Brookside Cheri (right)
Brown Sugar
Brown Sugar: When this one is good, it’s so good. But it’s usually only good for about 3 weeks and then it starts blowing it’s center on a constant basis. I’ve been trying to make it work for 5 years, it’s time to let it go!
Coralie?
Castle Drive/Coralie- at this point, I’m not really sure who is who anymore but neither one wants to grow well here. I know others who have had success in my climate but the plants are always just wimpy and rarely give any blooms
Coseytown Early Girl
Coseytown Early Girl- An early white? That’s a dream come true! But this one consistently takes over a 100 days to bloom for me- 3 years running now. I wish it weren’t this way, but it’s gone.
NTAC Mai Li- I’ve kept this one for many years because I like it’s color changing- both colors are great. But it’s always a bit late and it really didn’t like the extreme heat this year.
I’ll probably choose a few more before my final cut list is done but for now - this is who I know is outta’ here! So who’s getting the boot from your garden this year?
Dahlias and Hurricanes
Well there’s a title I never thought I would write. This is one of those blogs that may have more answers than questions right now. But one of the many reasons I blog is to have a record of what happens while growing dahlias in climates they hate. And now we have another reason they hate this climate.
But yet, we persevere!
So - the facts: From Sept 26-27, the Upstate portion of South Carolina (along with western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, northern Florida, and a swath of Georgia from the coast to the Carolina border was hit by Hurricane Helene that made landfall as a category 4. I know we received over 11” of rain at our farm. This was also after a severe thunderstorm had already come through our area 2 days before causing some damage and soaking our soil to the saturation point.
First off: How do you prepare?
1. Harvest everything you can from your fields. Don’t leave partially open flowers to wave around in the wind and rock your plants- this disturbs the roots.
2. Support everything! Make sure all your netting is in place and secured, add extra corralling.
3. Prune plants if needed. If this storm had come through in August, I would have pruned any really tall plants back knowing I had enough time for them to regrow/bloom. Since this was the end of September, we didn’t do that this time.
4. Increase your drainage. If you know you have areas of poor drainage, pre-dig some routes for water to escape.
Then you go hunker down and stay safe during the storm.
Afterwards:
So one thing I’ve learned is to give things a little time. They always seem worst right after the storm. So the only thing I did the first day was observe. I recorded how bad the damage was and where. I learned one area of my farm is a wind tunnel. The dahlias there were not just blown over- it looked like something had whipped them around and caused a massive tangle of plants. We had to cut that row back by half. It won’t bloom again this year but there was no salvaging it, best we can hope for now is tuber growth. Fortunately the weather is being kind now and we are staying dry.
Our home farm sits on a hill and never have I been more thankful for it. Majority of the standing water drained off within 24 hours. It did leave some silt in areas that still needs to be removed but mostly we had to cut out a lot of broken and damaged stems. Most of the blooms were windblown and waterlogged. All in all I would say we lost about 75% of our saleable blooms for the week in this field.
Our offsite location was not as fortunate. We had 4 rows of white dahlias. We sell a lot of white dahlias because a large majority of our customers are wedding florists. Two of the four rows had just started blooming about week and a half before and the other two rows were budding up. On Saturday when I took the first look, here’s what I saw:
Wilted, stressed out plants. Those plants are basically drowning because so much water had come down and this field is flat. The blooming rows looked like this:
The left picture is a week before the storm, the right is a day after the storm. I’ll admit I was very discouraged when I saw this. This field represents a significant portion of our income for October. White dahlias are the one color I can always sell. And now we’ve lost 90% of what was in bloom.
The above picture is from Tuesday morning. You can see where the plants on the left side are rebounding but the right side is still wilty. The two non-blooming rows look like this all the way down. One plant is fine, the next one is drowning. Right now, about 40% of the plants look okay. However, I dug around in the soil and could feel mushy tubers. This is not a good sign. My hope is that they have a big enough tuber base that they won’t rot completely. These are second year plants and they are Blizzards (which are amazing tuber makers). A late frost and a dry October would be a huge blessing right now. Might be enough time to get some blooms and new tuber growth out of these plants. The only thing we have done to these is to pull back the mulch so the soil will dry out faster.
We just raked it into the pathway. Should help a little, I hope!
I was able to cut the damage out of about 20’ of one row. So we’ll get a few more blooms but the rest of the rows looks like this:
I honestly don’t know if cutting back this hard was the right decision. But after 4 days, I was already seeing yellowing foliage and the plants were so stressed. I felt like removing the heavy foliage burden from the plants might give them a chance to regrow. At this point, it’s a waiting game.
The goal changed after this storm came through- at this point, it’s all about saving the tubers! Losing the blooms is a substantial loss but loosing the tubers would be 4x the loss. One thing I do know from previous tropical storms: you don’t dig your tubers when they are saturated. I thought this would be a good idea a few years ago after I saw plants sitting in water after a tropical storm. Those tuber clumps mostly rotted in storage. Tubers that have an excessively high water content don’t store well! So here’s hoping for a beautifully dry October and really late frost. We need time for plants to regrow!
2024 Variety Highlight- September
It’s been awhile since I’ve done a variety highlight so let’s go. There’s not really a theme to this- these are just some varieties I’m loving right now. Some are new to our field, some we’ve grown a few years.
Copper Boy
Copper Boy- Red seems to be getting popular again. I’m getting more and more requests for it. I’m glad, ready to move on from the burgundy phase. Copper Boy is gorgeous, shorter dahlia but cut deep and you’ll get some good stems.
KA Cinder Rose
KA Cinder Rose- A lot of my new KA’s died off in the July heatwave, but this beauty stayed strong. And she’s given me several stems already. Only her first year here but showing good potential- here’s hoping for some good tubers!
20th Ave Gwen
20th Ave Gwen- this has been a pleasant surprise. I’m not sure if I ever even saw it bloom last year. If so- I think it missed it. But it’s gorgeous, well worth the wait. This is a dahlia you want to let open a good bit on the plant because the color develops more as it opens. It softens and takes on some peachiness on the lower petals.
Normandy Bright Day
Normandy Bright Day- I was expecting the color to be a bit more vibrant but it’s a beautiful peachiness which I’m not sad about! First year here but it definitely gets a pass to keep growing.
Doodlebug
Doodlebug- I’ve been growing this for a few years and I just keep thinking it gets cuter and cuter. It’s a smaller size than most of what I grow but has a certain sweetness to it. It also blends into any fall palette!
Diana’s Memory
Diana’s Memory- this is an old favorite. I lost it a few years ago because she’s not a great tuber maker. But she’s always been a favorite blush so I decided to try again. Will she make good tubers? Well we’ll know in a month or so.
