Grow Dahlias From Seed | Sowing Dahlia Seeds || Budget Gardening

Learn how easy it is to grow dahlias from seed! In this video, I show you how to plant / sow dahlia seeds. Propagating plants by seed is a budget friendly way to save money in the garden – and it’s fun!

______________

Have a gardening question or an idea for future videos? Leave a comment below and let’s chat!

📷 Follow me on Instagram for updates, announcements, and pictures of my gardens: https://www.instagram.com/budgetgardeningvita/

#seeds #growlights #sowingseeds #plantingseeds #propagation #seedstarting #budgetgardening #gardeningtips #seedsowing #dahlia #dahlias

hey budget gardeners VCA here join me today as we sew some Dalia seeds so let’s [Music] go I live in New Hampshire I Garden in USDA zone 5B and my average last frost date based on my zip code is around May 15th today is March 15th and I’m about 9 weeks away from my average last frost a when it comes to starting dalas from seed you want to start them about 6 to 8 weeks before your last frost dat I’m starting these seeds a little bit earlier than that and the reason is I plan on pinching the plants back at least once and that will delay the bloom time when it comes to pinching back plants you don’t do it with every plant out there however with dalas they benefit from being pinched and the reason is it helps with branching and more branching means more flowers I didn’t know if you knew this but when it comes to starting delas from seed eventually by the end of the season that plant that you started from seed creates tubers and those tubers can either be dug up at the end of the season or you can keep them in the ground and they’ll come back for you year after year it all depends on where you live dalas are known to be Hardy in USDA zones 8 through 11 although some people have had their dalas overwinter successfully in lower zones usually in those zones you need to give them Extra Protection and Care I’ve never tried overwintering the delas in the ground I dig them up every year and I store them in my unheated garage I’ll put a link to a video I made in the description that shows my process for storing my Dalia tubers over winter when it comes to starting seeds it’s always based on your average last frost dat you don’t want to base it on your growing zone you might live in the same growing zone that I do which is 5B but our average last frost dates might be different so it’s very important to know when your average last frost date is and then based on that you count backwards when it comes to starting seeds and if you don’t know what your average last frost date is check out the website link below enter in your ZIP code and there’s also a map on there and between those two things you can find what your average last frost date is or you can just do a quick internet search by typing something like when is my average last frost date and then put in your location even though I do overwinter my Dalia tubers each year I still enjoy the process of starting the plant from seed in fact I really enjoy collecting my own Dalia seeds and I’ve made videos showing the process on how I collect the seeds now keep in mind when you collect Alia seeds they’re not going to produce an identical copy of the p plant but it’s still fun to do Dalia seeds are fairly large in size which makes it easy to find the seeds as well as handle them when the seeds do germinate they germinate sporadically over a period of about 2 weeks with my Dalia seedlings I usually have to pot them up about twice and I usually pinch them back once during the time when I start them from seed until the plants go in the landscape even though Del has come in lots of sizes I really like the dwarf size because I can put those in different pots and containers and a lot of times you’ll find my dalas in containers up along my front walkway I have a lot of Dalia seeds so let me show you all the seeds I have and let’s go ahead and sew some of the seeds together you can see I have a lot of Dalia seeds I will not be starting all of these seeds this year but I do want to show you the seeds that I have these are from Baker Creek and they’re called Dandy improved and again you’ll notice it says perennials zones 3 through 10 but it’s my understanding that that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can leave these tubers in the ground and that they would come back year after year I just believe that they’re a perennial if you take the tubers out of the ground at least where I live in zone 5B and then I can get my tubers to survive and come back next year and this Dalia grows to be about 2 feet in height and even though it says start the seeds indoors four to 6 weeks before the frost dat we’re starting them a little bit earlier it says the seeds will sprout in about 7 to 14 days ideal temperature is between 70 to 75° fah seed depth is about 1/8 of an inch here are the delas that I started from seed a number of years ago and I’ve collected the tubers from them the reason that I bought more seeds was I don’t have all the colors that they show on this packet so I would like to add to my collection but I highly recommend this Dalia if you just want a nice compact dwarf variety of Dalia especially for pots and containers so it says it’s low growing and it’s a bedding type of Dalia again start the seeds about 4 to six weeks before your average last frost date and like I mentioned earlier the tubers that get created from this may be over wintered and it’s the similar information as what we already read earlier just printed on the package here the rest of these dalas are all dalas that I’ve collected over the last many years this pile here these are all the same type as these they are just the dwarf variety they were the very first dalas that I ever started I really haven’t bought a ton of Dalia tubers I really enjoy the process of starting them from seed so these are all seeds that I collected from my unwinds mixed delas and then the rest of the seeds here are just seeds that I colle Ed from different locations from Parks as well as from my friend’s house and I’m excited to at least give each of these seeds a try I’ll be running an experiment this year I’ll be sewing some of the seeds inside a seed starting mix and I’ll also be starting some of the seeds between a wet paper towel here I have some seed starting mix I like to make my own seed starting mix and I’ll put a link to a video down in the description it’s basically two parts of Pete Moss but you can use cocoa core to one part of very fine verm ulite and then I add a small pinch of dolomite lime which helps offset the pH of the Pete Moss I also poured boiling hot water on my seed starting mix you want to use premoistened seed starting mix but also the boiling hot water helps kill any possible fungus eggs that might be in here when I squeeze my seed starting mix notice there’s no water dripping out but when I let go it’s holding its form and that’s the right consistency that you want for your seed starting or potting mix I like to start a lot of my seeds using seed starting mix since Dalia seeds are on the larger side you can skip the step if you want to you can go right to potting mix but I prefer to use seed starting mix I just feel like the seeds don’t have to really fight with big chunky materials but honestly I think potting mix would also be fine with Dalia seeds I like to use restaurant takeout containers because honestly they’re free to me and they make wonderful little green houses in fact this one has little vent holes in it which is wonderful because it in B it gets too hot in there and I did make holes in the bottom of the container because you want to bottom water your seedlings you don’t ever want to water them from above because that can introduce all sorts of problems so I’m going to go ahead and add my seed starting mix to my container and now I’m going to press on the seed starting mix I want to take out any ear Pockets that might be in there I don’t want to press too hard because I don’t want to compact the seed starting mix too much when it comes to seed starting I do like to use Garden markers because I find that they don’t wear off as easily as a pen or a Sharpie it’s always a good idea to add labels when you’re planting seeds so I have one here for Dandy improved and just so I can remember when I planted these seeds it’s going to be March 15th and I created additional labels over here and you’ll notice I have dividers in the middle too I’m okay with planting a bunch of seeds in this container as long as they’re all going to germinate around the same time since these are all Dalia seeds I feel comfortable putting them all in one container like this you don’t want to plant different types of seedlings in one container because they all grow at different rates so we’ll start with the Dandy improved and you can see there were a lot of seeds in the seed packet in fact I’ve sewn some of these seeds before which is why the packet has already been opened and I’m not going to start a whole bunch of them we’re just going to start a small handful I’m just going to use a pen and I’m going to make holes where I’m going to be placing the seeds and then we’re going to cover them again we just barely want them beneath the soil surface another way you could do this is you could scatter the seeds on the surface here and then you could cover the seeds with a light layer on top there are different ways to do the same thing and I’m placing them all pretty close to each other because as soon as they germinate they’re going to be coming out of here and I’ll be potting them up and they can get potted up into a six cell pack or you can even pot them up into something a little larger like a two or 3in pot because dalas do grow pretty quickly once they germinate so we just sewed eight seeds here that should be plenty I’m going to go ahead and just cover them now with the rest of these Dandy improved seeds I’m going to show you a separate method that I’m going to be trying as well I don’t know why but whenever I used to do this method a number of years ago I always used tin foil you don’t have to use tin foil the big thing is it’s nice to use something like a paper towel and you want to scatter your seeds on there and try to space them out so they’re not touching I used to do this a long time ago and I really enjoy this method especially for larger seeds part of it is it’s just fun to see when they germinate and when my kids were little I loved showing them what the what it looks like when the seeds would germinate so now that we’ve done that I can go ahead and I can fold this in half and I’m just going to use this small hand pump sprayer I’m going to spray this with a little little bit of water and I’ll be checking on it and if I notice it’s starting to turn dry I’ll spray it with water again you don’t want it over spray it with water because you don’t want to rot the seeds out and I always then took my tin foil and just covered it like that but I know when my mother-in-law used to do it she would put it on a paper plate and she would just keep the uh paper towel just like that on a paper plate I’m just covering it because I want to keep in the moisture again there are a lot of different ways you can do this some people like to take it and put it inside of a Ziploc bag and I’m just going to label it so I’m writing Dalia D and improved and we just put the seeds in here on March 15th and what I’ll be doing with this is I’ll just be checking them pretty much every day or every other day and if I notice that this is starting to get dry I can give it a spritz of water but the key is as soon as I start seeing that AC seed is starting to sprout or germinate I can then take that seed and I can go ahead and sew it directly into a six cell pack or into a 2in or a 3inch pot it’s just a another fun way to basically get your seeds to sprout and it’s also a great way to check germination if you have some old seeds and you’re not sure how they’re going to germinate this is a great way to check it so if out if let’s say you had 10 seeds and only three germinate that tells you you have a 30% germination rate with those seeds so just like we took the Dandy improved and sewed some seeds in the container here and then we also put those seeds and we put some inside of the paper towel I’m going to do the same process with the unwinds mixed with a peach or salmon colored uh Dalia and then a yellow colored Dalia over here and once I’m done with all these steps I’ll show you what’s next [Music] you’ll notice that I pressed down on the seed starting mix and the reason I did that is because I wanted to make sure that the seeds make good contact with the seeds starting mix once the seeds start germinating and start creating Roots I want the roots to be able to Anchor into the seed starting mix I like to multi seow my seeds in restaurant takeout containers because it saves a lot of room under my grow light a lot of times we run out of space under our lights SO multi- sewing seeds like this initially saves room under the lights and it also ensures that I’m only pricking out seeds that have germinated because you know how it is sometimes some seeds are not going to germinate so why waste space under our grow lights I will only be pricking out seeds that germinate and then I’ll pot those up so I’m just going to go ahead and spray this with a nice little Spritz of water next I’m going to add this cover it’s going to act as a humidity dome but if you don’t have something like this you could take something like clear plastic wrap and put the clear plastic wrap on top of your container as well now I’m placing the restaurant takeout container on a Seedling heat mat which stays on 24 hours a day in order to get the 70 to 75° Fahrenheit range and notice I have my grow lights here these these are turned on 16 hours a day from 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. remember be patient it might take 2 to 3 weeks to see some sort of germination once I see good germination I will remove this container off of the heat mat but I’ll make sure that they’re still under the grow lights because they will need that nice strong light and again with these guys I’ll be checking them daily I’ll be spritzing it with water if I need to and as I see seeds germinating I can go ahead and I can pot them up into six C packs or even 2 or 3 in pots I’ll be sure to keep you updated once the seeds have germinated and then I’ll show you my process for potting them up pinching back the seedlings giving them fertilizer and then eventually getting the plants out in my landscape what are some of your favorite Dalia varieties and let me know if you’ve ever started dalas from seed or if you’ve ever collected the seeds from your own plant and until the next video make it a great day with gardening