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Carpe Dahlia Flower Farm

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Grand Ledge, MI
Carpe Dahlia Flower Farm

Throughout the growing seasons we offer mixed bouquets, straight bunches of flowers for special order

10/09/2024

This morning’s patchy frost means the end of the outdoor growing season. I will limp the powdery mildew suffering dahlias in the hoop along a few more weeks so seeds can develop, but for the most part this portion of the dahlia season is over.

I’ll wait a few weeks before digging up my dahlias so the eyes pop and it’s easier to divide them. I only dig up what I can divide in one day so the eyes are the best, and I divide right away because it makes storing easier and because I NEED to know how many tubers I have to allow me to obsessively plan for next years growing layout.

These seed pods are from my five seedlings in my dahlia breeding program that have been slated to keep or release. I harvested last night knowing that a frost was possible. Two of them have proven to be fantastic seed parents so I’m hoping to have lots of seed after letting these ripen a bit more in the house over the next week.

10/07/2024

Ten days after cutting the meristem tips, I have visible growth. Hopefully I removed a small enough section that only the rapidly dividing cells are present and the cutting will outgrow the virus that is infecting this dahlia.

I have 38 dahlias in some stage of meristem cleaning right now, as well as 15 more varieties I hope to culture before frost hits on Wednesday.

Last year I successfully cleaned 6 varieties of DMV/DCMV. It will be about 9 months before I know how successful I will be this year, but I’ve already learned a lot and have made significant improvements against contamination and keeping the cuttings alive.

09/29/2024

Carpe Dahlia Summer Blush during a September sunset.

Fall is the best. The dahlias are going strong and the weather is lovely. We are making a trip to the lake today and stopped at to pick up squash and fresh donuts at a farm stand along the way. I hope you are enjoying fall also!

09/20/2024

Fourth bloom of the season on this first year seedling and I’m still in love with it. I’m planning to bag this one soon and try to do a hand pollinated cross with one of my other seedlings. I think this one has made the cut already to get virus tested so it can be added to the propagation list for cuttings and many more plants next spring. Maybe a touch more pink than the lavender blush I was seeing before. We’ve had unusually warm and dry weather for end of September, so who knows if it’s the heat or the day length or just how the plant is feeling this week.

09/14/2024

The dahlias in my arrangement entry in the nature theme for the Midwest Dahlia Conference Show hosted by the Elkhart Dahlia Society are all seedlings. The split is about 50% Carpe Dahlia Summer Blush (my third year seedling that is part of the novice hybridizer program with ) and 50% first year seedlings. Plus some foraging from my landscaping and pollinator meadow.

09/09/2024

Hollyhill Serenity is one of my meristem successes from last year. The plant tested positive for DMV, but after meristem culture I was able to create virus free stock. I’m not sure if it’s the virus removal or the difference between being in the ground this year vs being in a grow bag last year, but the flower is so much larger and petal dense. The plant is a little behind all of the others because the tissue culture wasn’t ready to root until well after many of the other varieties and was planted out late.

I have about 30 varieties in tissue culture at the moment, although they need to survive and grow for months before I can test to see if the virus was successfully removed. I also have another 40 or so that I want to attempt to take meristem cultures of before frost hits. The good news is that I can always save tubers and grow in my quarantine plot again next year if I don’t get to it in time.

09/01/2024

I have been really happy not only with how my third year seedling Carpe Dahlia Summer Blush has been growing for the last two years, but also with the seedlings that I was able to harvest from it. Especially since the plants were all in the field with the other seedlings and so not really isolated with the best stock. The first photos are all first year seedlings of this variety, and the last photo is the third year seedling itself. This is one of the varieties that is evaluating in their novice hybridizer program.

1. Blended sunset colors seedling - this one is very floriferous
2. Variegated burgundy with pops of brighter pink seedling - great stem strength
3. Picotee seedling with a watercolor like blend…
4. The same seedling as #3 but later in the seedling when it’s much lighter and the picotee pops
5. Yellow seedling
6. Same yellow seedling
7. Light pink seedling
8. Carpe Dahlia Summer Blush - late August when the yellows are starting to pop more than the pink

08/25/2024

New dahlia seedling. I flagged this one as a watch, and blooms three is so much better than blooms one and two. I’m a sucker for stellar dahlias. So much that I don’t even mind that it’s yellow.

08/14/2024

20th Ave Pure Prince

This is my best producing new-to-me variety. They are pumping out the blooms and it’s almost hard to keep up in the disbudding. I think this is a variety that would work really well for both cut flowers and dahlia shows.

08/12/2024

CD Summer Blush

This is a seedling from 2022 that I love. It has a blend of pink and yellows that works as a bunch by itself but also with a wide range of color palettes. It has been a prolific bloomer for me and is shaping up to do the same this year so far. This is one of the varieties that I submitted to novice hybridizer program and I’m excited to see how it grows on the other side of the country.

08/06/2024

I have a new all-time favorite seedling. This beauty is 5.5in and survived crazy hot temps as well as multiple thunderstorms. The petals are nice and firm. The blush is mostly at the bottom of the bloom, so I’m wondering if it is a light sensitivity issue. I’m looking forward to more blooms later this year.

The plant habit is nice too - about 4ft high now with long, strong stems. Only about 1/3 of the seedlings have opened so far, but even if this is the last good seedling I get I will consider it a successful year. This is an open pollinated seedling of one of my seedlings.

08/04/2024

Virus can be spread from one plant to another from dirty tools. This is the set up that I use to ensure I have clean snips. The basket is from hobby lobby. The jars are leftover spaghetti jars. I have one with soapy water and the next with 10% bleach water. I have 4-6 snips with me, and get in the habit of always putting the nips in the same side and taking them out the other side of the jar. This lets the snips have about one minute between use so the bleach has time to kill any virus.
In the other side of the basket I keep my biodegradable marking tape for the seedlings I don’t want to keep (I’m not pulling this year because dahlia seedlings are better than weeds), a garden marker, and plastic tree tags for seedlings I want to keep. My brix meter is also in there, in the hopes that one of these days I will find the time to measure the brix levels.

08/01/2024

Dahlia health task -

To help improve airflow I removed the bottom 8-12 inches of leaves from the dahlias in the hoop. Not all of the cuttings were big enough, but most were. This will hopefully help delay powdery mildew. I’m growing in the hoop so that I can have dahlias growing late into the fall when they make the most seeds, and so I need to do what I can to hold off mildew now.

I don’t strip leaves in the field with the seedlings. My normal season is short enough I haven’t noticed a lot of powdery mildew in the field and I am a believer in stress testing the seedlings. Plus I have a lot of seedlings and it would take forever. I would never say too many seedlings, because you can never have too many seedlings… right?

07/30/2024

This is currently my favorite of my new seedlings. It is very bright! I’ve misplaced my ADS color samples since last summer so I am going to need to do some hunting to get an accurate color, but it’s fairly vibrant. There is some fading which adds to its character. I’m a sucker for the long, swooping petals.

07/29/2024

New Seedlings!
I returned home from vacation to find the seedling field blooming and quite a few that I’m excited about.

The winner seed parent for this last week was Sandia Icicle. Please ignore all of the chomping that the Japanese beetles were able to do while I wasn’t around to remove them! The first photos are all first year seedlings of Sandia Icicle and the last photo is Sandia Icicle.

07/22/2024

The dahlias in the hoop are at a really good spot this year (for my needs). They are almost all grown from cuttings to have the best chance of a virus free planting. Last year I thought having the hoop would be a good idea to start really early, but I don’t think the large plants handled the heat of summer well and I ended up having to cut a lot back after our giant windstorm blew everything over. I still ended up with a lot of blooms and seed in the fall - which is what I’m really after - and so this year I planted later intentionally. The smaller (but not too small) plant size seemed to help everything weather our very hot late June-early July weather. The cattle panels seem to be providing good support although the real test will be as the plants get bigger. The cattle panels were so easy to install - they were a Christmas present for me last year and I am loving the time they saved me so much.

07/16/2024

The seedlings are starting to open. I had some isolated open centered dahlias as well as some Floret seeds that are most likely open centered and they are well ahead of the other rows that were fully double parents. The nice thing is I’m getting staggered bloom openings and so there’s almost always a new bud (or two) opening each day.

07/04/2024

I’m firmly on the middle of the waiting stage for the dahlias. It’s getting too late in the season to take more cuttings, and too early for blooms. A few of the seedlings have buds, but those are more than likely going to be open centered or messy forms and will be culled.

As a prime example of the waiting season, here is a seedling from last year that did not bloom. It has lovely dark foliage and so I kept it over the winter to see what it would do. There are buds on it so I will know in a few weeks if it was worth keeping.

Does anyone else keep seedlings that don’t bloom the first year?

07/03/2024

I am happy to report that I was able to successfully remove DMV from six dahlia varieties by meristem culture over the winter. These 6 varieties all tested positive during ADS testing last year but came back with a clean bill of health this month after more than 9 months in tissue culture.

I’m not going to say that it was easy - but it is possible and all done out of a home lab by a hobbyist without any formal training other than reading research articles and watching YouTube videos. The largest cost came in testing the dahlias and not the supplies needed to do the meristem tissue culture (not counting one time equipment costs but looking at long term costs)

This gives me hope that we can reduce the prevalence of virus in dahlias by increasing the amount of virus free stock and without having to lose varieties because of virus.

The next step is coming up with a process to keep them clean, or at least to keep the virus population at a manageable level. More to come on that over the season. Right now I’m going to focus on enjoying that my leap of faith last fall paid off.

06/14/2024

While this may not look like the most exciting photo, it presents a huge milestone for me. This dahlia tested TSV positive in the ADS testing. I took meristem cuttings of it at the end of October to try and clean it from virus. The cuttings took a very long time to even get to this size, but I tested a sample on all three plants today and all three came back negative for TSV. Each plant was an individual meristem at one point. I am beyond excited to get results after almost 9 months of keeping the tissue cultures alive.
This variety also tested positive last fall for DMV, and so it will be going to Agdia for testing this weekend along with 5 other varieties that survived the meristem-tissue culture-rooting process. I won’t know how successful I was until I get those results back, but at least I’ve made a dent in the problem by removing one virus.

05/31/2024

A little over 1000 surprises in the ground. First year seedlings are my favorite because each one holds the promise of something amazing… even though the odds are small that I will keep them. This is about double the number that I grew last year, and also includes a lot of “pre-culling” of the early germinators to get to a manageable number. My number one seed producer was KA’s Keltie Rose, and this entire row is full of some of those seedlings.

04/14/2024

Seedling 22-16
Last year a powerful storm system blew across the middle of the state with sustained 70mph+ straight line winds that took down trees all over my community. Most of my dahlias suffered (as can be expected) especially as I only minimally stake/corral my dahlias.
But this variety stood up to the winds with no noticeable damage. The stems are especially straight and strong. The leaves even have a thicker feel to them than other varieties. I have a plan to put this variety in the ends of my rows to help block the wind as well as to contribute its excellent plant habit to my genetics pool for the bees to choose from.

02/14/2024

I hope your day is filled with the people you love or doing the things you love.

🩷❤️🧡💜🧡❤️🩷

02/13/2024

Taking meristem tip cuttings is rather simple in concept, but in practice - if you want to remove virus - you need to be very particular about which places you harvest. If the growth is too small the meristem won’t survive culture. If the meristem is too large, it may not grow virus free. I have a slide I calibrate my cuttings against as I work to make sure I don’t select something too large. In practice this means I often err on the size that is too small or I have to pass over some leaf nodes as not good opportunities. I’m operating under the practice of just taking more than I think I need to account for the inevitable ones that won’t survive the early days in culture.

01/31/2024

According to data collection and testing done by the American Dahlia Society, the vast majority of dahlias in the US are infected with virus. After working to eliminate or at least reduce the presence of virus in my garden, I was getting frustrated with the limited number of varieties that I could obtain that were actually virus free once I tested. I felt the limited selection was hampering my breeding goals. After some late night doom-googling, I came across research that identified multiple ways to remove virus from dahlias including meristem tip culture, chemotherapy and electrotherapy. After a bit more reading I decided to give meristem tip culture a try. One home based tissue culture lab, multiple attempts to get my sterilization process right and 4 months later, I have been able to pot up my first varieties grown from meristem tips. The plants are still too young to test if the virus elimination worked, but I am at least hopeful that I was able to successfully complete the process at home.

I’m very excited to add this as a supplement to my existing virus protocols and to eventually test the plants to see what my success rate is.

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10875 N Royston Road
Grand Ledge, MI
48837

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Videos

Pink to rose seedlings. Dahlia breeding is a numbers game. Sometimes when I go out in the field there are so many non-keepers it can be discouraging, but then when I can pull together an assortment like this only from dahlias I’ve bred it keeps me going. #carpedahlia #dahliaseedlings #dahliabreeding #newflowers #newdahlias #seedlings #cutflowers

CD Harvest This is another of the three seedlings I sent to @triplewrenfarms for the novice hybridizer program. I love the darker reverse petals and picotee. The mix of orange and deep red reminds me of changing leaves. It does not like hot weather and the center suffers over 90 degrees. But I feel like it’s more of a late summer color when the weather is cooler, so it still works for me. It might be better suited for cooler climates that don’t get many 90 degree days during the dahlia season (like me). #carpedahlia #dahliabreeding #fallflowers #flowers #dahliaseedling #dahliaseedlings #dahlia #dahlias #dahliasfromseed #picotee #orangeflowers