Beef Tomatoes

I am pleased to say that the Marmande Beef tomatoes planted at the beginning of this blog are doing very well and this is them last week:-

Dahlias

I took some seeds from my red dahlias and planted them this year.
  Here is the original red dahlia:-

















And here are a few of the colours I got from these seeds:-

They are so pretty.  Gonna save some more seed this year from these ones to see what I get!.......


 Tom,
My dahlia tubers were given to me by my daughter as a mother's day present and were supposed to be white but they turned out the deep red colour.  We have a good draining soil here in the south and the tubers have remained in the ground and come up every year but I have to remember to put down slug protection because they love to eat the new shoots, so do this as soon as the new shoots appear. Elsewhere in colder regions they would have to be taken up each year.

I have lifted all the other tubers though from the seeds I put in this year.  I was quite surprised how big the tubers were and very healthy looking.I gently removed as much soil as possible and put them in a cardboard box on newspaper and placed them in a frost free shed.  Oh and the stems were cut to 6 inches.  I loved the fuchsia pink dahlia and will experiment with more seeds to see what other colours I can get.  Some people split them now but my other half's Dad who absolutely adored dahlias and had a brilliant show each year did his in the spring.

I too love this shape!