Our son Jimmie gave us some flowers to plant when we saw him in early August. Jimmie worked for Hines Nursery and knows his stuff. He said it wasn’t too late to plant the Dahlias and that we would be impressed with the flowers. They grow to be as big as dinner plates.
Well, they sure did. Nancy picked 4 or 5 huge blooms yesterday. They were, as you can see, lovely.
Jimmie said not to wait as long as we did to pick the blooms. The stems were 7 or 8 feet tall. I understand that they will bloom till first frost, so they add a bunch of fall color to your yard.
Dahlias are not considered to be biennial, but you can dig up the tubers in the falls, store them over the winter and replant in the spring. In warmed climates, they do resprout from underground tubers and blossom each year.
Native to Central America and parts of Mexico, Dahlias belong to a family of plants that includes sunflowers, daisies, zinnias and chrysanthemums. The flowers were actually grown as food crop by the Aztecs way back when. We haven’t eaten any yet, but we are certainly enjoying the lovely blooms.