Dahlias Delight

MY DAD RAISED DAHLIAS in the backyard of his home in Bloomfield Village, Michigan. It became a fun hobby for him as he moved through his senior years. I recall him ordering tubers from Swan Island in Oregon. He was particularly attracted to the “dinnerplate” selections. https://www.dahlias.com/our-farm/about-us/

Prompted by my dad’s interest, I toured Swan Island in Willamette Valley thirty years ago when I was in Portland on business and was thoroughly impressed with their entire operation.

Each fall, Dad divided the tubers (which have the appearance of long skinny potatoes) of his favorite varieties and would wash and dry them on the back step by his garage. He would then place them in a waxy egg carton filled with sawdust and sprinkle them with sulfur. He stored them over the winter in his basement workroom. Always interested in new selections, he would order a few each year from Swan Island to join his collection of saved tubers.

Nursery-grown dahlias are popular today, with their smaller blooms filling a need for patio-sized planters. I prefer placing a few purchased tubers in pots of loamy soil in early May and then enjoy watching the emergence of green shoots and leaves in early June. By July and August, they are bushy and often four feet tall. The lollipop-like buds on hollow stems appear in late summer and fall. The subsequent flowers are spectacular, as displayed in the above photo I took last year.

The diversity in color and shapes of the blooms is immense; hundreds of new varieties are registered each year. The only quality the flowers lack is a pleasant fragrance, which surprises many new to the Dahlia world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahlia.  If you are looking for a heavenly scent like Peonies, forget it!

My challenge to the plant breeders out there. If you can splice a gene from a lightning bug into a petunia to make it glow at night, I would think that a scented dahlia is not too far off.

How about a spicy cinnamon fragrance as a start?