I used to live in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio. I never tackled Dahlias because of all the work of digging, drying, tagging, budding, replanting, etc...
So here I am, twenty years later in the Central Valley of Northern California (think Joaquin, Stanislaus, Amador counties) Recently I moved to a house with a huge back yard. It's zone 9A - and I ran into a gorgeous yellow Dahlia at Lowes... aaand, since I have SO much space I thought, "Hey, I can grow Dahlias."
I ordered a bunch of bulbs from Eden Brothers. There was a 50% off sale on end of Spring/Summer shipped bulbs. I may have gotten carried away.
At any rate, now I'm trying to figure out what works for Dahlias in an area that is hot in the summer (80-105 daytime, 60-75 night), with almost no precipitation during late Spring and Summer. (not sure about Fall and Winter)
I don't want the bulbs to rot, but everything else gets watered every Tu, Th, Sa. So I've put them in the ground and I've turned off the irrigation... but if I don't water them at all, the soil will get rock hard and all the budding tubers are going to ... well, certainly not rot. So I'm trying to figure out how much to water them. It's heartening to discover that all the warnings about 'do not water' are more guidelines rather than dire predictions of dissolution, destruction and sorrow. All the comments here are so helpful, especially since I've gardened so much in the Midwest and I have a general sense of water, sun, heat, etc...
I'm fishing around my local area for a Garden Club with some zone knowledge. I haven't seriously done any gardening since I moved out to CA from IN around 1999. This is going to be an interesting learning curve. I'll post as I figure things out, hoping to pass along the learning to someone else so they can save money (and beauty).
Thank you all!
