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Old April 17, 2018   #33
Cole_Robbie
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Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: Illinois, zone 6
Posts: 8,407
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I think dahlias show a lot of promise as a farmer's market product for me, because no one else is doing it. There is one vendor who does well selling glad stems as cut flowers, but he has to dig up his bulbs every year and keep ordering new ones, which is a lot of work and no one else wants to do it.

And as a container flower, with the dwarf varieties, no one else wants to grow anything that grows that slowly, so I would be the only one selling them. The upside is that they seem to last all summer just fine in the container and keep blooming. For most live plants I have sold in the past, the clock is ticking whether I can sell it or not before it starts to look bad from being in a container too long. Even if I got stuck with a greenhouse full of container dahlias in the fall, overwintering them would not be that difficult. I will watch how the one I have does on its second season without having the roots divided.

I also read on a dahlia site that deer won't eat them. If that is true, then I could grow them by the acre. The deer and associated fencing costs are my biggest limiting factor in regard to space.
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