OK - I admit - I'm not writing about a horse....that was just a cheap trick to get you to read the blog today! Actually, I am writing about tubers/dahlias with no names! Not that they don't HAVE names - just that I don't know what their names are......Sometimes (usually!) this is due to lack of vigilance on my part - I allowed the tuber to be separated from its label, or I wrote the original tag in ink/pencil that inevitably fades before the bloom is on the plant. But sometimes it is because the tuber was mismarked when it was planted in my garden last year - something I discovered when it bloomed - sometimes I would be able to identify it by comparing it to pictures, or it was one I was familiar with. Sometimes it was because the tag fell off the tuber clump during rinsing, or in transit - that happens, you know! Or maybe I bought a tuber that was packaged in a sandwich bag, labeled with a picture, description and name - but after I took the tuber out, the name was not written on it - maybe just a number or even nothing at all - and I had thrown out the baggie - Help!
Dad always liked to use the "Bottle of Ink" indelible pencils that many dahlia growers are familiar with - I really like these for writing on my tubers - I bought two dozen of them last year from Swan Island at two dollars a pop - a bit pricey, but worth it for your pencil of choice. So the good news is that even if the tag falls of a tuber clump, I can often still decipher the name on the mother tuber (if it didn't swell too much, distorting the writing.) In our club, we always try to make sure that the tubers we sell to the public are individually marked with the names. But sometimes, some of them manage to slip through, and I discovered that a couple of tubers that I picked up at our sale were labeled with a number like "26" or "11" - characteristic of the numbering system common among growers. This method of organizing and categorizing their stock works great for them, but wasn't very useful for me, once I got them to the garden for planting. I know they were good, or I wouldn't have taken them home.....but they still went into the garden as an "unknown" until they come into bloom - Surprise!
This year, I decided to plant a few "border" or "dwarf" varieties of dahlias in my front yard flower bed - Since dahlias have such a long blooming season, I thought this might be a way to keep some color in the front yard, and give me a little experience with these varieties, which I really haven't grown before. I planted just 6 tubers, and carefully made a tag with the name, classification and color information for each. I stuck the tags in the ground behind where I had planted the tubers, and waited for them to pop through. Eventually, all six of them grew, and when I went out to pound some short stakes with better tags on them, I found that all the names had washed off or bleached out of my white plastic tags - Darn! Now, all six of those dahlias will have the same name - Unknown, or "UK" for short! I have a vague idea of the names of some of them, but even though I drew a diagram of where everything is planted in all my other gardens, I failed to diagram this planting area.....So I will just have to watch and wait. I performed my first "disbudding" of one of those plants today, so a bloom can't be very far away.
Labeling has been a challenge every year, because the hot sun that we get here, along with the washing off effect of the overhead sprinklers I have in the gardens. Even the industrial strength Sharpies that we tried last year only lasted about half the season. This year, I bought a cool new label-maker at Costco, and have made printed vinyl labels for all of the dahlias I have growing (except for these unfortunate little guys in my front flower bed!) So far, they seem to be holding up pretty well in the weather, but it has been a cool summer so far, so check with me again in a month, to see how they are doing. There is nothing sadder than a horse (oops - DAHLIA) with no name!
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