How to Maintain Records of Dahlias
Skill in growing dahlias, like every other skill, does not necessarily come from performing the job year after year. Experience is a great help, but is of little value if its lessons are not applied. In any field of human endeavour the highest degree of skill is invariably shown by those who have both knowledge, plus an enquiring mind with which to assess the results.
Furthermore, it is almost possible, by quite simple preventive action, to ensure that none of the dahlia’s diseases will develop, much more easily that it would be to confer immunity on a human being. So, when reading, remember that it is intended only to show what may happen, not what will happen, to your dahlias. If the sole result is to make each and every dahlia grower diligent in his spraying and dusting routine.
The greatest enemies of the dahlia, without any doubt, are the virus diseases. The virus itself is a minute particle, not a cell or an organism in the true sense of the word, but a minute fragment capable of multiplying itself by division, and by using part of the plant’s life system, dividing with this throughout the whole of the plant. It has been stated that these viruses are themselves nucleoproteins, presumably therefore capable of combining with the protein in both the protoplasm of the cell and in the cell sap. In throwing out the balance of the cell, obviously enough, they throw out the whole metabolism of the plant, usually much to its detriment.
For instance a record of the time of taking cuttings, date of stopping, date of bud production, time of first bloom and perhaps successive crops will be of great assistance to the exhibitor, as he will be able to assess with some degree of accuracy the estimated time of blooming of a particular variety, and so, by varying stopping dates, etc., make it possible to produce blooms on or near a specified date.
Possibly at such times the virus is confined to the cell protoplasm, and is not present in the cell sap, and thus, as well as being inactive, is not capable of being expressed with the sap; this may explain why virus transmissibility is low at times when virus symptoms are not present. Conversely, when active symptoms are seen the virus is active and the chances of transmission to another plant are correspondingly high.
Add to this a record of the effects of various types of feeding and of the general behaviour of the plants under various weather conditions, and the mystery of plant growth will become a little confusing each year as more and more data is available for study.
