A Guide to Growing Dahlias from seed
Growing dahlias from seed is a little different to the traditional way of growing from tubers, in the way that every dahlia that flowers from a seed is an entirely new variety that has never existed before, that's what makes it so exciting, you never know what you're going to get. Your new dahlia flowers will be a mix of exciting new varieties - you have chances of getting singles, semi-doubles and fully-doubles. Also, after your dahlias have flowered, and the plant dies down as it runs out of energy when the cold weather sets in, the tubers can be lifted and stored until the weather starts to warm and you can plant them out into the garden to flower again!
SOWING SEEDS:
1: Get some seed! We have some in our online shop HERE (while stocks last), or if you have saved seed from last year that’ll be perfect as well!
2: About 4-6 weeks before your last spring frost, you can start sowing. You can now just plant your seeds like you would most other seeds, but my favourite way to do this is to germinate the seeds first in a moist paper towel, this way I have a much higher germination rate. I stack about 20 paper towels (that have been ran under water then gently wrung out) on a plate, fold the stack in half, then pull back all the sheets leaving 3-4 at the bottom. I then place my seeds onto the sheets at the bottom with their label, fold back 3-4 sheets on top, and repeat the proccess on that layer. Once the stack is full of seeds, I then wrap the whole plate + paper towels together with cling wrap, or cover with a container to keep the moisture in. I know some who put the whole stack into a ziplock bag, which works great. The covered plate is then placed in a warm spot and checked on every day, misting with water if the paper towel starts to dry out.
3: Get ready your planting trays/punnets and fill them with a seedling mix. Once your seeds start to germinate, you can tell from the little white root coming out one end of the seed, create a small hole in the seedling mix with a pencil and pop in your seed with the root pointing down. Gently firm in the soil around the seed keeping the top half of the seed above the soil (although if you haven’t pre-germinated them just pop the seed in the hole and cover lightly with soil). Continue this untill you have planted all your sprouting seeds, then gently water them in.
4: Once your seedlings reach 2-3 in., you can pot them up in into seperate pots to let them grow while you wait for the last frost to past (we don’t get bad frosts where we are here in Queensland so I plant out in late August usually).
5: Once your seedlings have been planted out, care for them like you would a normal tuber-grown dahlia while you impatiently wait for the first bloom, which usually takes about 3-4 months from sowing - depending on factors like the weather.
I really hope you enjoyed this tutorial of sowing your dahlia seeds, and remember if you want to give it a go, we have seeds available HERE, only while stocks last so get in quick!
↓ Some of my favourite fully-double seedlings. These will be trialled for 3 years before being named and (for the ones that perform well), given an offical tuber release.
