Great photos, Noni. Please keep them coming! So great to get a preview of the new stuff from the other side of the country!
teddahlia Aug 2, 2015 7:32 AM PDT
Name: Ted Oregon We enjoy breeding new dahlias!
Gordon Jackman came by on Friday to pick flowers for his arrangement entries at the Kitsap show. There appears to be a large ribbon by his arrangement. Just about the only flowers available were second year seedlings and these flowers are unnamed second year seedlings.
I got an up close look at that arrangement and it is way more wonderful then the photo shows! I believe that the arrangements in this class are about following a proscribed list of characteristics and illustraitng a theme. His is portraying the American Desert Southwest and it contains the cowboy hat, larriet, boots. neckerchief, as well as the gold and orange dahlias. The colors of the dahlias really portray the idea of the "Golden West" well and even their sparseness in the arrangements are part of the look...I thought it was VERY VERY Nice! The top flower was badly wilted, but I guess it was still OK when the judging was done. Gordon said that he had filled his container up to the top with water but for some reason it wasn't drinking it. He had several other arrangements and they were all nicely done. I had a nice chat with him at the show, and introduced my new Wwoofer to him. It was her first dahlia show and she quite enjoyed it and learned a lot about the different forms. She enjoyed the arrangements a lot too. We got there right after it opened at noon and were nearly the only ones there, which was nice but rather odd..
Les Connel had a LOT of new dahlias there in the undescimated ones. Including a couple of my favorites from the Test Garden! Gordon had been over to the garden for the judging, and I asked him how it looked. He said there were some nice ones there but the garden was definitely suffering from our weather. I guess one of the things we will learn this year is which new introductions hold up well to drought!
teddahlia Aug 7, 2015 9:53 AM PDT
Name: Ted Oregon We enjoy breeding new dahlias!
Not enough flowers to go to the show in Elma, Washington. Margaret and I agreed that we did not have enough flowers even for a few arrangements. We gave all our flowers to our good friend to show there. This is the latest year for flowers ever and it is because of the hot weather.
Hmmm, was thinking about trying to go to Elma specifically to see what Hollyhill entered...guess we won't bother. I will take my Wwoofers to see our club show(WSDS) in Puyallup, the week after. Any chance the Kennedy's will make that one if the weather co-operates?
PNWGal Aug 7, 2015 2:18 PM PDT
Name: Linda Portland OR, zone 8b
I'll be going to Elma to judge, but really don't have any flowers to bring either. I hope somebody's bringing something! I'm staying Friday & Satuday night with my folks in Olympia. Since I would not need to go back to the show on Sunday, I am going to take the opportunity Sunday morning to drive up to Tacoma to see the Trial Garden there.
Linda, I hope the gardens won't look too shabby...they were trimmed up for last Saturday for judging and we won't be back to work on them until Monday :whistling:
PNWGal Aug 8, 2015 12:08 AM PDT
Name: Linda Portland OR, zone 8b
I wish I could be there Monday morning to join the party! I guess I'll get to see what a week's worth of work looks like in a TG with so many plants. We are at the point in the season where we try to groom our garden twice a week to keep up with the disbudding & deadheading. Swan Island's fields are officially open now and there are more visitors.
I wish you could be there Monday too, Linda. Do you find it hard to resist deadheading and disbudding in other peoples gardens? I do
PNWGal Aug 8, 2015 11:51 PM PDT
Name: Linda Portland OR, zone 8b
Just don't go deadheading in a hybridizer's garden!
teddahlia Aug 9, 2015 7:01 AM PDT
Name: Ted Oregon We enjoy breeding new dahlias!
"Just don't go deadheading in a hybridizer's garden!" That has happened several times and many good seeds were lost but none that were hand crossed. When Noni and I visited Accent Dahlias, he had hundreds of seed pods ripening and it was difficult not to harvest some of them.
ClearCreekDahlias Aug 9, 2015 7:01 AM PDT
Western New York State Dahlias! Dahlias! Dahlias!
First show tomorrow, and I might have three flowers to enter.
I might as well take them any ways, since I had to pre reg and pay up front. I have a lot of incomplete blooms, or blooms that are only now just opening, or that are too old to show. I have been watering every day and feeding, but I guess I will have to wait for it to start raining again.
addicted Aug 11, 2015 8:05 PM PDT
Name: Em NY
Good Luck Kim! Where is your show?
PNWGal Aug 12, 2015 1:23 AM PDT
Name: Linda Portland OR, zone 8b
Tacoma Trial Garden Aug 9
The garden in Tacoma at Point Defiance Park is the biggest ADS Trial Garden by far, with 60 entries this year. It's in a beautiful setting, surrounded by acres of lawns and huge trees, and next to a good-sized rose garden. Funny to be in a dahlia garden with the perfume of roses all around. The dahlias are in tidy raised beds, with drip irrigation that has kept it looking good despite the high temperatures.
PNWGal Aug 12, 2015 1:44 AM PDT
Name: Linda Portland OR, zone 8b
Some individual entries from Tacoma #10 is winning hands-down for floriferousness.
#10 & #11
#17 is looking nice, more like a regular laciniated now
#28 has a blue cast that the camera did not capture. Love the dark tips.
#29 is a big red stellar, at least 6" across.
#38 probably a miniature FD
ClearCreekDahlias Aug 12, 2015 5:54 AM PDT
Western New York State Dahlias! Dahlias! Dahlias!
I like #10!
teddahlia Aug 12, 2015 11:13 AM PDT
Name: Ted Oregon We enjoy breeding new dahlias!
At our dahlia club meeting last night, we had our "mini show" that we put on to show people how shows work and are judged. There were about 150 blooms there and they were divided into classes and we set up some "judging teams" with senior judges and people who wanted to learn. We had three teams who judged the same flowers to see if there would be some consistency. When it was done we compared results and in most of the classes the same flower was picked. If it was not the same flower, that same flower was in second place on another team. Although no overall winner for the "best show flower" was picked, there was a consensus that the favorite flower that brought to the meeting was Hapet Blue Eyes. It would not have won best in show as a show flower but was competitive and was just gorgeous. One of the members of the ADS Classification team was there and he reclassified it as BB FD BI W/PR. Here is a picture from the Hapet site that does not show all of it's beauty. http://www.peters-dahlien.at/sortiment/Bilder/Sortiment/Dek_...
#10 is winning hands-down for floriferousness.
#10 & #11
#17 is looking nice, more like a regular laciniated now
#28 has a blue cast that the camera did not capture. Love the dark tips.
#29 is a big red stellar, at least 6" across.
#38 probably a miniature FD