I am very excited for my garden this year. It brought my heart so much joy to grow Zinnias last year so I am branching out and trying more flowers. I have always been so drawn to Dahlias - they're absolutely beautiful. I bought all my Zinnia seeds from Floret Flower last year so I decided to stick with Floret because their quality is incredible and ordered their "Bees Choice Dahlia Mix"
I literally have only grown Zinnias for cut flowers which I highly recommend because they're so easy and the seeds can be planted directly into your garden after your last frost. Mine grew so well and I had gorgeous flowers for months and months. So being a newbie to Dahlias I've done lots of research online and picked the brains of my closest gardening friends to get started.
I wanted to share how the seed starting process has been going so far. Something you may not know about Dahlias is that a packet of seeds is always a surprise - you just never know what color, shape, etc you'll get because it's based off pollination. The neat part is that once you plant your seed and grow your Dahlia plant, you can save the tuber at the end of the season and replant it the following year to get the exact same flower.
Pretty neat, huh?
I am so excited to see what pops up in our garden this year and then save/ name all of my favorites to use again!!
A blog that was really helpful for me getting started was "The Flowering Farmhouse". I followed her paper towel method and between the amazing seeds and her method, I had almost every seed germinate.
She recommends taking a paper towel and wetting it then placing your seeds on it and covering it with another damp paper towel and placing it into a bag to store in a warm/ dry place like on top of your fridge. Mine sprouted within 2 days so I started moving them into seed starting trays.
Now this is where I want you to learn from my mistakes - I ordered a hard plastic seed starting tray but when I went to do my pickup with kids in tow they were out of it and put the biodegradable cardboard trays in my bag instead. Since the kids were not really wanting to run errands, I decided to try it - even though I kept wondering how they would hold up once they were wet. GET THE PLASTIC TRAYS!
I picked up seed starting soil and put it into a large bowl then got it really damp - not soaking wet but not dry whatsoever. I put the soil into the cardboard trays and then popped my Dahlia sprouts into each one. I have been amazed at how quickly they've grown in a week!! I didn't do heated mats or grow lights - I live in SC and started these mid March so just placed them in front of a warm sunny/ window. It recommended starting them 6 weeks before planting so that's what I did.
I will say my gut was right and the cardboard has not held up well with watering - I had to break apart the cups to dry them out because they're saturated and falling apart. Some even started to get white fuzzy mold around the outside which I wiped off really good.
Once they get a little bigger with more leaves, I am moving them into the 4 inch pots until I transplant them into the garden mid April.
(So this first photo is on Monday March 11th - when I moved the sprouted seeds into trays and the last photo is today Monday March 18th when I separated the cups to dry out more - isn't that amazing to see the difference one week makes)
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