Rab Ritchie - Kettlebridge, Fife.
Jorja: medium semi-cactus,
red, strong growing four foot plants. Grown at 7 up will easily
reach size. I had some good blooms but some had bad centres.
Need to select stock.
Gala Parade: small decorative, lavender.
This variety grew to 5 feet with me, plants were strong and healthy
with good stems. Flowers go right back to the stems, petals are
rather on the large side but nonetheless I will give it another
go.
Ross Ainslie, Pitlessie.
Bonnie Fettle: Miniature Decorative
(unclassified). Excellent foliage on good strong stems. Let
down however by large green centres and flowers that fade before
they are three quarters open. I have already consigned this variety
to the compost heap.
Hillcrest Divine: Miniature Decorative
(unclassified). All the blooms were oversized with me due to
not taking enough breaks and disbudding too hard. I didn’t
like the number of top-sitting blooms but I will try a bit harder
with this one next season.
Hillcrest Kismet: Medium Decorative.
I was a little unsure of four of the six plants I received.
A Salmon Pink Decorative, tall growing (6ft in my tunnel) with
lots of petal. I will grow this one again if I can over-winter
it.
Lemon Zing: Miniature Ball?. Short,
four and a half foot, sturdy plants, which flowered quite late
with me. The yellow flowers are held on strong stems and have
a high petal count. This results on occasions in the centres
being a bit crowded. I will grow this one again but I am not
sure if it is a Ball or a Dec.
L.A.T.E.: Miniature Ball. One of
the best and most reliable flowers I have grown this season.
From six plants I exhibited one or two vases every week for seven
weeks. Every flower showable, on ramrod stems and with good foliage.
A future banker for me without a doubt.
Joe Gartshore, Coatbridge.
Mistill Contessa: Miniature
Decorative. A four and a half foot plant with good stems, produces
an abundance of flowers . Has very vigorous habit and would tend
to oversize if insufficient breaks taken. Clear cut decorative
formed petals should cause no difficulty with the judges. Certainly
one for the keen Miniature grower.
Babbette: Small Ball / Miniature
Ball. This robust 4ft plant produced beautiful deep purple blooms,
perfectly spherical but about the 5 inch mark. As a dual classification
variety a bit of manipulation would produce ideal flowers for
both the Small and Miniature classes. Care would have to be taken
in the early stages to keep and treat plants for each size as
if they were separate varieties. Will grow again.
Mary Pitt: Miniature Decorative.
A new to me variety, although almost ten years old. I grew this
variety in a bed next to Abridge Taffy (which I consider to be
still one of the top Miniature Decs.). It was the old game of
spot the difference and I must say I was surprised. Whereas Taffy
is a very vigorous plant, producing plenty of flower, which can
easily go oversize, Mary Pitt has a much more stable nature, fewer
flowers but of the right size and a lower petal count. This is
arguably an advantage in a Miniature, creating the impression
of a finer form. The petal formation is truly Decorative and
the centres were excellent. I will grow Mary Pitt again this
season but I am not ready to scrap Taffy.
Beatrice: Miniature Ball. This unclassified
variety proved ideal in all respects but one. It may have been
the weather we had last year but I ended up with a profusion of
good flowers which were neither Ball nor Dec. The top half of
the bloom had perfectly formed pointed Dec. petals and the bottom
half clear cut rounded Ball petals. I can only think that this
is due to some form of reversion taking place in the tuber from
which the plants were taken. Curiosity will drive me to try this
one again.
Dave Sutherland, Guildtown.
Suffolk Spectacular: Medium
Decorative. Tall grower which blew about in the breezes of Perthshire.
Slightly smaller than B.J. Beauty and not quite as good. Not
a failure, though and I did get a ticket or two with it.
Andrew Allan, Chryston, Glasgow.
Hillcrest Carmen: Small decorative.
This latest release from Les Jackson puts on a phenomenal amount
of growth throughout the season. I more or less left it to its
own devices, if you thought about giving it a try then I would
suggest starting off about ten up with minimal disbudding. I managed
a few vases here and there and it helped me to secure a few red
tickets. Will grow it again and look after it a little better.
Kotare Irene: Miniature decorative.
What a disappointment this one turned out to be. Good healthy
grower, strong plants producing good stems. The only drawback
was that none of the blooms had a centre. John Frater in New
Zealand says this is one of their best miniatures. More knowledgable
growers than myself said I should try it again next year. However
there are lots of good miniatures out there and I decided rightly
or wrongly to compost all the plants.
Geoffrey Kent: Miniature decorative.
Plants arrived too late for this part of the world and I had
to keep them under wraps to push them on a bit. Good strong grower
with good stems. Difficult to tell it apart from Karenglen unless
both varieties are side by side. This one did not damp as much
as Karenglen late in the season. It does not make as good a tuber
as Karenglen. Two vases of it in the Glasgow Evergreen Championship
class helped me to retain the award. Judge Bill Robertson obviously
knew what he was doing. I was not so fortunate at other shows
where the judges must have thought it was wrongly named and gave
it a wide berth. Apologies for the photo, I have not yet mastered
taking photos of red blooms.
Amy’s Star: Orchid. This was
a new experience for me, I have never grown Orchid dahlias before
and didn’t know what to expect. The tuber along with a number
of other new varieties was sent to me by Bruce Cornett in Yellow
Springs Ohio.
Not what you would call a floriferous dahlia, quite low growing
about 2½ feet. Visitors admired it. I think if you pulled
out a damaged petal on this one it might possibly be noticed.
If I can keep the tuber through the winter I will grow a few
more for the basket classes.
Jennie: This was a tuber Alan Fisher
sent over from the states. Another new experience for me. What
to do with chicken legs? I potted it up into a five inch pot
and later on it went into a nine inch. Not many people grow Fimbriated
varieties infact there is only one class for them at the Scottish
National and it is for a single vase of three. I thought the
colour of this one was superb, good strong healthy plants with
good stems and an added bonus take a look at the tuber this variety
made, they are huge.
Kenora Wildfire: Large decorative.
What can you say about this variety. For someone who does not
usually grow Large take a look at the photo and judge for yourself.
Good healthy plant from a tuber sent to me by Bruce Cornett.
A little late in flowering but I put that down to receiving the
tuber late in our growing season. Makes good tubers.
David McMillan, Coatbridge.
Karras 150: Small Cactus.
Grown in tunnel, excellent form and depth to this variety early
on but started to damp. Grown outside in Tom Brunton‘s garden
it was excellent with no marking.
Hillcrest Jessica: Plants did not
look good early on but romped away and reached four foot. Flowers
were very good nice size and depth with excellent stems and easily
matched. Only 4 plants grown, so it was only shown in mixed vases.
John Jack seen this variety at two shows and he will be growing
it next year along with his Giants.
Mistill Contessa: Miniature
Decorative. Seven plants grown, excellent healthy plants with
well formed blooms which did not mark. Slightly oversize as I
did not have enough breaks on the plants. Will grow again.
Geoffrey Kent: Nice little miniature
but in my garden it is identical to Karenglen so I will let this
pass.
Ian Hill, Thirsk, North Yorkshire.
Big Orange: G. D. A complete
colour break. Bright orange tended to fade in the sun. Easily
made size and depth / good grower, possible for the show bench.
Early to flower.
Gitts Perfection: L. D. Pink
/ white blends. A flower with perfect petal formation and pleasing
colour. Some later blooms did make giant size but could do with
more depth. The petals did mark easily. Would probably do better
in a cooler season.
Sir Alf Ramsey: G. D. Pink
/ white centre. Well worth waiting for a superb grower with ramrod
stems. Most blooms bang on top of the stems. A bit later to
flower. Will probably grow 4/5 up next year. Some massive blooms
about and some trophy winners as well. I think the show benches
will be full of this variety next year. With Fairway Spur and
Sir Alf Ramsey, Peter Cleaver has certainly excelled as a raiser
.
Mingus Whitney: G. D. Although
this cream giant was thought to be a G.S.C. I am sure its a G.
D. This variety grows to 4feet and produces some exhibition quality
blooms. Some stems tended to be a bit weak to support the flowers.
It produces a lot of growth. With the plant stripped down more
this problem should be overcome. A variety that most Giant growers
will want to grow.
Willowfield Mick: L. D. Another
that was a pleasure to grow. This peachy coloured large dec. has
a nice form and good depth. Early to flower. Exhibition material.
Cynthia Louise: G. D. Pale yellow.
Said to be a sport of Kidds Climax so maybe I expected too much
too soon. I shall try this variety again next year.
Reeces Dream: G. D. I grew one
plant of this variety in 1998. I liked this bronze with pink
tipped variety but with some petals with no tipping. I decided
not to grow it in 1999. I have been told that this fault is not
too serious, so I will grow it again next year.
Cyril Higgo’s Fimbriated Dahlia Seed from Graham Carey.
I bought a packet of 25 seeds for £ 5 . + p&p. Good
germination, 23 plants planted under fleece on 29th April. They
started to flower early July, colours ranged from white to deep
red with lots of bi-colours, mostly double flowers with quite
a few showable in the fim. class. I hope to keep a red / yellow
bi-colour. I reckon they are excellent value.