Enjoyed your recollections of your mom's dahlias.

Thanks, Bubbles.

Hi Sharon, I can appreciate your Dahlia staking job as being a bit of a drag!! Last year I didn't get to the staking because I needed to be away from home much more than usual. What I found out, was that the Dahlias crawled along the ground and made a beautiful display as a unique ground cover!! They weren't tall but they were just as huge and looked just as lovely!!

Good idea; Great pictures; Wonderful story & Beautiful colors!

Thanks for a great article. I am addicted to dahlias and am just starting the staking thing. Course even if the dahlia is advertised as 6' tall or 24" tall, you never know, so I wait until they show what they will do before putting those awful 6' stakes in my garden. Sometimes they meet expectations and sometimes they looks silly as the plant refuses to come to expectations. lol

GREAT story, beautiful blooms, and I loved all the history which I didn't know. Thank you for being a life long teacher Sharon

Great story, thanks! Although the dinner plates are beautifully impressive, I try to plant dahlias with smaller blooms just for that staking issue. I also find some varieties have really weak stems whereas others are more robust. When all is said and done, though, I am most influenced by the lovely picture on the package and then hope for the best. Dahlias are only marginally winter-hardy (too much rain rather than too cold) for me, so I end up replacing them fairly often.

Teri, I can just see your dahlias as a ground cover! I hadn't even thought of that.

Leon, your words are always so gracious, thank you.

Mary Stella, do you plant yours all in a row like my mother did? When they bloom maybe you could send a picture, stakes and all! That would surely bring back memories for me. When I visited Seward, Alaska, I was stunned by the size of plants, even the dandelions had blooms almost as big as mums. I"ll bet your dahlias are stunning.

Vic, thank you for being my cheerleader!!

The last picture in the article is the last dahlia I had, Deb, gone now as the result of wretched weather no doubt, but it was only about 3 feet tall and not very big as a bloom, but it was truly beautiful. I need to think about getting more of that size. Seems that they always produce the most perfect bloom of any flowering plant. Perfect symmetry usually.

Lovely Dahlia story Sharon!

I am trying my hand with Dahlia this year..still too early to tell if I will enjoy growing it. Something to look forward to seeing your lovely photos..though mine are not the dinner plate size. Thanks for the lovely story!

Hi tarev!

I hope you love them, and I hope you share pictures when they bloom!

Always love your tales, Shar! My "dinner plate" dahlias are only dinner plate size if you happen to be an elf or a somewhat larger fairy, but they are a lovely shade of purple, so I try to keep them going.

I'm almost in the mood to find another dahlia to replace the saucer sized one I lost, Woofie.
It's always good to hear from you.

I generally start them from seed each year, as I don't have much luck overwintering them. But one of those seed-started dahlias was such a nice shade of red and was so big and prolific that I saved the tubers. Be interesting to see how they do this year.

Take pictures, Woof. I want to see.

If they survive to bloom, I'll do just that! You should trying growing some from seed, tho. It's fun, it's cheap, and you get some very interesting flowers.

I might just do that, now that I've stirred up my own interest.