I think many gardeners are familiar with the
large exhibition-sized dahlias that they
plant from tubers that they
purchased in the spring time. And those are
outstanding garden plants giving you
a nice garden plant, a container plant with
really spectacular blooms.
But don't overlook the dahlias that are
now being produced as seed crops. The
dahlias in front of me are all produced from seed
and what they offer to the home gardener, I think,
is a really nice, compact plant
that is going to produce flowers over the
course of the summer. As you can see right here
many of these dahlias both have flowers with plenty
of buds yet to come. And these only get
better over time, these make outstanding
garden plants for your home garden, but these
are spectacular in containers. If you have containers
on your porch, or patio, or balcony,
putting several these in a pot
will give you this bouquet of flowers.
And as you can see
there's plenty of flowers and the only
thing that I think I might suggest if you're
going to put these in the garden, they like
full sun.
They like a well-drained spot, yet they like a
little bit of moisture. Don't let them dry out,
otherwise the quality really goes downhill.
The other thing I think you need to keep mind if they
are in containers, make sure you fertilize
them maybe every two weeks or so with a
liquid fertilizer of your choosing, mixed
as per label. They'll keep the plant looking
good,
keep the flowers coming on.
And they other thing that's important is that when
you start to see flowers starting to fade
and die back,
don't be hesitant to go in there and do
a process called deadheading. Just take the old
spent bloom away. This encourages new flowers
to come on,
keeps the plant looking good,
keeps these things from going to seed, which is going to cause the plant to basically quit
flowering. So again,
don't overlooked these really spectacular looking
seed-grown dahlias. 
And the thing that you might, you might
get a benefit from, sometimes they do produce
tubers. And if they do produce tubers,
you can dig them up,
overwinter them
for next season, replant
and you'll get this similar kind of thing back again. But for
garden performance,
spectacular flower,
good-looking plant, nice habit
you really can't beat these seed grown dahlias.  
