{"id":2616,"date":"2019-01-07T06:30:46","date_gmt":"2019-01-07T14:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=2616"},"modified":"2019-01-07T06:30:46","modified_gmt":"2019-01-07T14:30:46","slug":"steps-to-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/steps-to-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"Steps to Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bishop<\/a>In the great book of gardening truths, one truth stands out: a gardener\u2019s reach always exceeds his or her grasp.\u00a0 Passionate gardeners dream big, but they are always short of time, sunny days, available space and\u2014inevitably\u2014money.\u00a0 This is not necessarily a bad thing.\u00a0 Lack of cash or at least the necessity of sticking to a defined garden budget can be a springboard to creativity.<\/p>\n

I am trying to combine my growing love of dahlias with a little of that budget-inspired creativity.<\/p>\n

At the end of last season, I made a resolution to put more dahlias in my sunny border.\u00a0 They are such glorious end-of-summer flowers\u2014dramatic in the garden and ideal for cutting.\u00a0 Every garden I noticed in August and September seemed to have bumper crops of dahlias, which made me crazy with envy.\u00a0 Treating the root cause of that envy, literally and figuratively, I started to think about my dahlia options.<\/p>\n

Like most people, I generally grow dahlias from tubers, which is the quickest way to get blooms, short of buying young potted specimens.\u00a0 Individual dahlia tubers are not terribly expensive\u2014most decent ones fall into the five-to-ten dollar range.\u00a0 But a significant dahlia investment can be costly.<\/p>\n

Veteran dahlia growers in cold winter climates amortize the initial expense by digging and storing the tubers after the first frost in the fall.\u00a0 If I accumulate a sizeable dahlia collection, I will probably do that as well, but for now, I have to think about ways of getting the greatest number of dahlias at the lowest cost.<\/p>\n

The answer came along with the first spring garden catalogs.\u00a0 One of my favorite vendors advertised packets of seeds for \u2018Bishop\u2019s Children Mix\u2019, a collection of dahlias in many colors.\u00a0 All \u201cBishop\u2019s Children\u2019 dahlias were initially bred from a famous hybrid variety, \u2018Bishop of Llandaff\u2019.\u00a0 The original \u2018Bishop\u2019 features gorgeous red petals and foliage that is almost black.\u00a0 The combination is dramatic and showy.<\/p>\n

I am fond of the \u2018Bishop\u2019, but I am absolutely besotted with the \u2018Children\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018Bishop\u2019s Children\u2019 come in varying colors, with flowers that may be yellow, shades of orange or peach, red or bi-colored.\u00a0 All the \u2018Children\u2019 feature the same near-black stems that distinguish the parent.<\/p>\n

I can buy one packet of \u2018Bishop\u2019s Children\u2019 seeds, containing approximately 70 seeds, for three dollars, or I can buy individual \u2018Bishop\u2019s Children\u2019 tubers for five dollars apiece.\u00a0 The choice is clear\u2014I will grow dahlias from seed this year.<\/p>\n

Of course, that means that I will not know what colors I have until the flower buds develop.\u00a0 Control over color and other specific traits only happens if you produce clones by taking offshoots from a particular tuber and growing them on into mature plants.\u00a0 The mysteries of pollination and genetics mean that the seeds collected from one of the \u2018Children\u2019 may or may not produce plants that are like the parent plant.\u00a0 This introduces an element of serendipity into the garden planning process, but I don\u2019t mind. \u00a0I will find places for all of the \u2018Children\u2019 that survive to adult planthood.\u00a0 If some of them are especially lovely, I\u2019ll wait until they develop mature tubers, take offshoots and grow them on.<\/p>\n

I always take catalog copy with a large grain of salt, but the seed vendor states that if I start the dahlias indoors in March, they will bloom in the garden by the end of summer.\u00a0 If I tend my flock of \u2018Bishop\u2019s Children\u2019 carefully, they should be ready to go outside when temperatures warm up.<\/p>\n

The seed order is in and the seed trays will be ready.\u00a0 By next August, I hope that the \u2018Bishop\u2019s Children\u2019 will make me into the dahlia queen of my neighborhood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the great book of gardening truths, one truth stands out: a gardener\u2019s reach always exceeds his or her grasp.\u00a0 Passionate gardeners dream big, but they are always short of time, sunny days, available space and\u2014inevitably\u2014money.\u00a0 This is not necessarily a bad thing.\u00a0 Lack of cash or at least the necessity of sticking to a … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[2022,934,206,2026,2024,2023,2025],"class_list":["post-2616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-bishop-of-llandaff","tag-bishops-children","tag-dahlias","tag-dark-foliage","tag-perennials-from-seed","tag-starting-seeds","tag-sun-perennials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2617,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616\/revisions\/2617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}