THE EXPERIMENT
I’ve been carrying out an experiment on planting
distances for dahlias. I’m working on the assumption that, given the room
dahlias would develop top growth and root growth in keeping with the area they
grow in. You could see it all around you, if a tree was planted to close to it’s
neighbour, it would certainly go up, but wouldn’t expand width ways. A few years
ago, when my dad was alive, I asked him why he planted his bedding plants so
close together, he told me `Close planting stops the weeds growing son’ of
course it does, but his plants only grew to the space that he had allowed them.
I suppose this was in the back of my mind when I thought of this experiment, but
ultimately it was to give me a smaller manageable tuber.
Any way, I decided that I would grow the plants on the experimental plot 25cm
each way, which in old money is just less than ten inches. I can hear gasps of
astonishment, but hold on, if you were growing a dahlia from a tuber, it would
end up with many more stems than I will allow on these restricted plants. All
plants were rooted in April, and stopped at the end of June. I reckoned each
plant would support four flowers at the most, and what I got in most cases was
four, although Lismore Canary decide it could look after many more than this, so
I let it, much to the annoyance of one of last years seedlings called Anne
Gravelle, which was crowded out a little. I could see that if all cultivars were
of equal strength, it worked perfectly well, but if any were a little stronger
in growth, they soon took over, exactly the same as humans, although with the
plants, it was more of a gradual process.
There were seven varieties, and I had four of each, and a couple of plants of
L’Ancresse, which I had bought in. All the stems of Lismore Canary have been
disbudded by the way, and although they are carrying twice as many as everything
else they looked good. Most others are almost there, with the exception of
L’Ancresse, which I think should have had an early stop, but having never grown
it before I wasn’t to know. As the flowers developed the size was no different
had they been grown at traditional distances. However because Lismore Canary
wanted to show off, her flowers were a little thinner. Obviously there were
fewer flowers on the weaker growers which I was expecting being nature’s way of
sorting out the space available, and as for the other reason for the experiment
when I lifted them all the tubers were noticeably smaller in size as well as
numbers.