Report From PIA – October 5
Those who come to this blog for thoughtful musings will please forgive me today because I’m about to gush about a plant. Yes, it’s an all-out OMG-isn’t-this-flower-outrageously-gorgeous plant rave.
I’m nuts about dahlias, the queens of October in my late-to-frost-seaside region. All of these annuals are fantastic right now, and thank goodness because I am providing the flowers for Noah and Wan Yi’s wedding next weekend.
But beyond the normal dahlia devotion, I am here to say that this year I discovered a new, and ever so wonderful way to grow these lovely flowers. This past spring, knowing that I was going to do flowers for the October wedding, I ordered dahlias from several sources. Brent and Becky’s always provide top-quality bulbs, but as I was searching for a range of flower colors and types, I also bought dahlias from assorted other companies.
I didn’t really pay much attention to the fact that when I was ordering from Corralitos Dahlias, in California, I was actually ordering cuttings.
Dahlia cuttings? Yes, that’s what I said in early May when I opened the box and found plants and not tubers. But I potted them up into six inch containers and stuck them in my solar heated seed starting shed.
In late May I placed the now twelve-inch tall plants into the cutting garden, and I have to say that they were the most bolt-out-of-gate, over-achiever annuals that I’ve ever put in my garden. Many of them started blooming in early July, and just look at the bouquet that I picked this evening.
Here’s today’s news flash from PIA: If you plant a garden you’d better be prepared to be wowed by the plants, and come to the entire enterprise ready to continue learning.
And just in case all of you thoughtful-musings people feel like plant mania has ruled the day, here’s what I was thinking as I left the cutting garden: This is one of the reasons that I think that gardening is good for people. There is always something new to be excited about, and there’s always another way to grow.
Here's the bouquet I picked tonight - all of these from Corralitos Gardens cuttings.
Each one of these flowers was so spectacular on its own that it was difficult to put them together in a vase... I wanted to display each blossom on its own.
