I don’t wax poetic about bulbs very often. I think they’re a tad overrated … [ducks] … and a bit too fleeting for my taste. However, I may need to change my tune some. As of this spring/summer I am all in on Dahlias, specifically the Dinner Plate Dahlia. Specifically, Dahlia ‘Break Out’, as seen in the pic below.

My wife loves, I mean really loves, a good Dinner Plate Dahlia. Why it took me so long to provide a supply of these flowers to her is a great topic for my next therapy session.

This offseason, I took the plunge and purchased three Dahlia tubers: two of the aforementioned Dahlia ‘Break Out’ and one ‘Cafe Au Lait’. I’ll cover ‘Cafe Au Lait’ in a future post.

Dahlia ‘Break Out’ frickin rules. The blooms are gorgeous and the two plants have provided an endless supply of blooms that reside in vases all over our home. But two caveats:

1. IMHO the plants themselves are “eh” at best. The stems kind of yellow and as you can see in the photo above, the heavy flowers topple over and tend to face down, not too unlike peony blooms. I did stake them (a necessity), but once you use a stake, that plant becomes unattractive. That is my hard and fast rule.
2. The bloom description is as follows: magnificent creamy blossoms tinged with blush pink and buttercream overtones. I can vouch this was accurate but not until much later in the summer. All of the blooms the first few months were all buttercream and no blush pink. Nice, but not what we desired. But then as the summer dragged on, the flowers transformed and we did get the tinged with blush pink. I have no idea if this is the norm or if the plants just needed time to establish who they really are. More to come.