KITSAP COUNTY DAHLIA SOCIETY

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1 KITSAP COUNTY DAHLIA SOCIETY Inside this issue: KCDS Officers 2 KCDS Board Notes 2 Harvest and Planting of dahlia seed by Leone Smith Compost Catastrophe 2 months later How to Submit photos to the ADS P. O. Box 502, Silverdale, WA It is hard to believe it is September already! We hope everyone has had a great summer and show season. Our KCDS show was fantastic this year, thanks to good weather and the help of the many volunteers who worked together to make it a success. We had approximately 1,500 blooms this year, up from the 900 last year. Several club Sandia Suncatcher, B LC V 2016 Dates to Remember 14 September Anderson garden tour 15 September KCDS meeting 20 October KCDS meeting & elections 15 or 22 October Cut Silverdale dahlias 29 October, 9:00 AM Dig Silverdale dahlias New 2016 Seedling members showed for the first time this year, and did very well. Drew Brant has agreed to chair our 2017 show, with help from Dan Van Natta. Now is a good time to peruse the blooms in the club gardens to see which cultivars might provide a winning bloom for you next year. This summer our club also supported the Kitsap County Fair by helping to classify the dahlias brought in by the public for showing in the horticulture competitions. This is always an interesting time and a good opportunity to spread the word about our club. Thank you to the members who were able to support this event. Our club gardens are doing well and are in full bloom now. Our first dahlia tagging took place last Saturday at the Silverdale gardens. The National Avenue and Port Gamble gardens will be next as we start the planning for our 2017 fall harvest. Dan and Steffany will be in charge of the tuber dividing this year, which will take place on November 5th. Volunteers are needed to be in charge of checking and sorting, packaging and labels see Dan or Steffany if you can help in these areas. We will discuss this further at our upcoming meetings, and all help is greatly appreciated. This is an excellent way to learn more about dahlias as we work together to prepare for the sale in April. Elections for 2017 are right around the corner. They will be held in October, with installation of new officers in November. This year the positions of President, Vice President, Treasurer and one trustee will be open. Please consider volunteering for one of these very important club positions. We have had 3 garden tours this season, with one more scheduled at the Anderson garden on 9/14/16. Each garden is distinctive and beautiful and it is a real treat to visit someone s home and see how their garden grows. 1

2 KCDS 2015 OFFICERS: President Dan Van Natta Vice President (programs) Drew Brant Treasurer Bill Jones Recording Secretary (minutes) Kim Van Natta Corresponding Co-Secretaries (newsletter) Allyn Arnold Debra Kurre Trustees Steffany Mootry Pat Paulsen Bob Overly ADS Representative Leone Smith Federation Representative Drew Brant Sunshine Committee Carol Derrick Regular Board Meetings Held on the first Thursday of each Month at 6:30 PM LOCATION: All Star Lanes, Silverdale, WA Board Meeting Dates 7 September 6 October General Meetings Held on the third Thursday of each month at 6:30 PM EXCEPT FOR: July (Club Picnic) August (Club Show) LOCATION: Crystal Grange 2160 NE Paulson Rd Poulsbo, WA BOTH meetings are open to all. If you have an item for discussion, contact Dan Van Natta by the Tuesday before the meeting and he will put you on the agenda. KCDS BOARD NOTES KCDS NEWSLETTER ADDRESS Please forward all comments & suggestions to: REFRESHMENT SIGN-UP September Dave and Leone or call Allyn or Debra to sign up for 2016 REMEMBER: Snacks for monthly meetings are reimbursable up to $15.00 per month. Provide the completed KCDS reimbursement form, together with receipts, to our Treasurer. KCDS Show: Bill is awaiting the return of the unused show award monies, and money collected from the sale of items at the show. He is also awaiting a bill from the fairgrounds for the chairs and tables used Tuber Sale: Bob has agreed to run the 2017 tuber sale. Dan and Steffany will run the tuber dividing this fall. KCDS Elections: The KCDS elections will take place in October and the new officers and board members will take over at the Board meeting in November. A non-board member will be needed to chair the nominations. The following people will not run for office next year: Dan (current president), Drew (current vice president), Bill (current treasurer), Kim (current co-secretary), and Steffany (current trustee). An audit is set for November 3 rd at 5:30 at the Silverdale bowling alley. This must be done before a treasurer change KCDS Show: Drew Brant has agreed to chair the show and Dan Van Natta will help him out. 2

3 GATHERING AND PLANTING SEED FROM DAHLIAS September 2016 By Leone Smith At the May KCDS meeting we talked about gathering dahlia seed this summer from some of your favorite cultivars. Remember, this is one of the most enjoyable and surprising features of this hobby. To walk down a row of seedlings and see what s new is just lots of fun. You might even become famous in the dahlia world! COLLECTING SEED Bees go in a straight line they don t bounce from section to section, so consider that when planting. Keep flower types close together. Decide on a parent plant open centered dahlias are easiest. If the parent plant is fully double, pull off petals from the back which will allow the front to open up. Mark mothers with flagging tape to not deadhead - leave the seed pod until it closes and is hard. Cut approximately 12 of stem with the pods; place on mesh trays so air can circulate around them. Let them dry then shuck out the seeds. STORAGE AND PLANTING We store the seed at a cool temperature over the winter. In late winter we lay the seed on damp starting mix in trays, labeling it with the mother plant name & cover the trays so the seed is in the dark & in a warm place. When they sprout we set each seed in small pots filled with damp potting soil. Seed germination is anywhere from a few days to a month or so, so watch the trays even after you think they are finished sprouting. The name of the mother plant stays with them at all times. (The pots come in sheets of 36.) Pots are set under plant lights and covered with clear plastic domes until they can stand on their own without wilting. We water them with a mister. When they are about 3 tall we move them to the greenhouse. They don t get covered except for overnight if we expect really cold temperatures. They sit on heat mats. Bees are hard at work in Dave and Leone s garden A small section of the Smith s beautiful dahlia garden. When we can see that they have begun to form small tubers/roots we take them off the heat mats until it is time to go outside. The name of the MOTHER PLANT travels with each one every step of the way. NOTE: We use ordinary shop lights nothing special. Good luck and have fun with it. 3

4 September 2016 COMPOST CATASTROPHE TWO MONTHS LATER By Allyn Arnold The July newsletter contained an article written by Debbie Kurre identifying problems several members were having with what appeared to be compost contaminated with residual herbicides. The dahlias were deformed, stunted, or worse, did not come up at all. Michael Cattin, a member of the North Central Washington Dahlia Society wrote that they also experienced this problem a few years ago. He reported that after a summer of heavy watering the plants slowly recovered. That is the approach we took at the National Avenue Post Office gardens, together with several applications of fertilizer. As is shown in these two pictures of Hollyhill Spiderwoman, the dahlias appear to be recovering. The first picture shows an initial deformed bloom. The second picture shows the bloom now a marked improvement. Some dahlias, such as Vassio Meggos shown above, still exhibit the pancake effect of flat deformed flowers. However, they appear to be getting closer to normal as the season progresses. The National Avenue Post Office gardens now appear to be on the right track. Mike Cattin reported that his dahlias were mostly recovered by the end of the growing season. The contamination did not appear to affect tuber production. He replanted tubers the next year from the affected plants and had no problems. We believe that will be the case with this garden also. 4

5 HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR PHOTOS TO THE ADS ONLINE CLASSIFICATION GUIDE By Debbie Kurre If you have visited the ADS website, then clicked on the online classification guide to look up a dahlia, you probably noticed many dahlias will have their classification info with no image available. Recently the ADS has started to update their data base of photos, but there are still many dahlias without a photo. If you have a good photo of a favorite dahlia that currently has no image available, you can submit your photo by following the ADS procedures. Complete instructions are at Click on online classification guide and then click on the bottom right how to send your photos. Your photo must be 640 pixels wide and no larger than 50 kb in size. The file name must be in the format the ADS requires. Getting your photos down to the size the ADS requests requires some resizing, as most photos we take are several megapixels in size, which is far too large for the ADS to accept. I have found a free website that allows you to easily manipulate your photos to the ADS size specifications. You can do everything from their website and don t have to sign up for anything. You should now be able to submit a photo of your favorite dahlia to be included in the ADS online classification guide. The address for the free program is To resize your photos, go to Click the orange resize photos here tab On the upper right hand corner, click with rounded corners (it keeps the photos a smaller size) Then under upload an image click choose file Navigate to the photo you want and then click open your file name will then show beside the choose file button Click upload image Your photo will then show on the screen By the new size button in the middle, type 640 and make sure the width button is selected (ADS requires the 640 width) Click apply changes the size of the optimized image will show under the picture in kb If it is more than 50 kb, go to the image quality box and start reducing it by 5, then click apply changes. Do that until you get the photo to 50 kb or less. Once you have the size correct, click on download this image. It will download a copy of the optimized photo (my Windows 7 saves it in image library) I copy that photo from image library and save it where I can find it (I made a folder called ADS photos and put the resized photos there). Make sure your photo is named correctly, per the ADS instructions and send the photo to: photos2@dahlia.org Greendor a photo now in The ADS Classification Guide 5