Dahlia Imperialis~Bell Tree Dahlia

What flower blooming at the end of fall and early winter here in our garden?

Tree Dahlia.

It is facing our kitchen window and such a pleasure to look at during gloomy weather. 

We have mild winter weather which this plant can tolerate.

This year this plants has grown taller and more stems after I pruned it hard early spring.

Some are 3 metres tall.

Our tree dahlia plant caught some disease last end summer with blackish leaves.

I chopped off the parts that were affected.

It grow more stems and recover really quick during the shorter daylight hours.

Bees really adore the tree dahlia bloom.

There are bees constantly around the tree dahlia plant blooming season.

Most of the tree dahlia bloom photo collections that I took has bees on them.

Tree dahlia sometime needs some support.

Some are leaning on our garden arch or other plant support trellis.

At the moment, the plant has block off the garden arch entrance.

I have a small hand, this is how big the tree dahlia bloom is.

The mauve bloom has kind of help me not going over the edge this few weeks.

It has been not easy writing a post not because of time-management.

But my mind is in chaos, I could not focus on anything and have horrible thoughts running on my mind. 2~3 weeks ago, one raining night while everyone sleeping I ran out from the house. I can't control my mind and I was shivering outside not due to the cold because I was very scared that I can't block the strong suicidal thoughts. I was so lost and called the mental health emergencies for professional help. The mental health community team came in immediately early next day and organise everything to help me get through the mental depression I have. Yes, I have been suffering mental depression not weeks for months by myself as professional help said and now it got worse that I start to suffer regular panic anxiety attack as well. So, some event had been a trigger, I broke down mentally and physically after long term stress.  It has been lonely battling the stress and depression alone by myself and sad not even your own family realise the emotional stress going inside me. If I tried to voice aloud my feelings or stress, I will only be reprimanded to stop acting childishly and try to be more mature which ended keeping everything bottle up inside. Otherwise, I usually will just be totally ignored or my family runaway from me when I desperately needed help with the children. I finally exhausted myself trying to please and take care of everybody being the perfect daughter, perfect daughter in-law, perfect wife, perfect sister and perfect student. I gave up fulfilling that expectation, no matter how much I put in, I will constantly be criticise by my parents and my in-laws blame me for what ever happened to my kids and husband anyway.

Sigh, life is so funny, never in my dream I would imagine myself sitting with psychiatrists trying to get my thoughts sorted out. I have been told several times that one of the reason is I lack family emotional support. I have been trying taking lots of responsibilities and taking care of everyone which makes me burn out from discussion with mental staff.

I thank all my blog readers for your support and kind comments.

It has helped me a lot getting myself sorted out and giving some of my self-confidence back.

I still have a long way to go for recovery.

I have not been able to go to school or study for more than a month now as it triggers the panic anxiety attack. I can't decide what to do at the moment. My body can't move held by fear and I am mentally exhausted. This time I let strangers giving me a helping hand which lead me the way I can go back to my sanity when family just turn blind eye towards me.

Sorry for a very depressing story, was just trying to open up and be honest.

Dahlia Cinderella

This is the first dahlia we ever grown. Bought a punnet of Dahlia "Cinderella" seedlings in 2010 at our local nursery. Some were grown in pots and some on the garden ground soil. They are easy to grow. However, have to watch out when they are young seedlings as snail or slugs like to munch on them. Dahlia "Cinderella" is a mini size dahlia it grows less than 30cm.

I was not planning on collecting seeds or dahlia tubers at that time. The plant got completely dried and died in autumn when the weather cools down. The first blooming season  we had with this dahlia in 2010 was late spring. I wanted to use the pots that were growing dahlia cinderella for other plants and found some dahlia tubers inside the pot. 

So I kept those dahlia tubers in a paperbag and brought them inside to see how they grow when spring comes. I tried to see whether there are any tubers from dahlia plants that we grow on the garden ground soil. However, there were none tubers from the plants there. Did it get rotten with all the watering because before I realised we can get tubers from them I planted other cool season plants at that site. The pots that were grown dahlia was not water after all the plants dried. It is interesting that the garden teaches you lots of things and you find so many new things discover unintentionally. Lesson to learn: don't water the plants when you intend to collect tubers or bulbs from it. Let it dried of naturally when the blooming season has past. My excuse is I was not planning to collect any tubers at that time.

Spring came in year 2011 , the weather gets warmer and I check how the tubers are doing. They are some rhizomes (correct me if I use the wrong term) sprouting from the tubers. I gave some dahlia tubers to my mother, but I am usually worried that she over-water them. Only a few were left for my fun experiment in our garden.

Planted the tubers and several weeks later some shoots poke out from the soil.

It is really interesting to see how different the blooming season of dahlia can be when you bought it from nursery or grow your own from seeds or bulbs. I don't used any fertilizer for our plants during any of their growth stages.

When did the dahlia "Cinderella" bloom this time around?

Looks like a tree dahlia young shoot at this stage.

The first bloom was in autumn.

Not like its parent.

But I think this is normal from growing your own from tubers or seeds.

Its the correct dahlia cycle following the season and expose outdoors.

Its not from a greenhouse and boost by fertiliser.

To judge how big is the bloom size, compare with the portulaca flower that bloom near it.

Visit Ewa for more flowers on saturday.

Of course we cannot resist collecting the seeds too.

We collected some seeds in 2011 from the original parents but by the time I remember about them sitting in my seed box its was probably too late to sow them. Growing from seeds will be this 2012 end of the year project. Plants that are grown from tubers will be the exact copy or clone of its parents. Wonder how the dahlia will look from seeds? Will it be only one colour or multi-colours.

We finally have some rain today after very warm weather.

Have a lovely weekend.

Tree Dahlia (Dahlia imperialis)

I got 2 long flower stem which I have no idea what it was from Barbra when I joined our local fruit and vegetable swap for the second time last year. She tried very hard to explain what it is and how to propagate it but I still can’t imagine what the flower will look like. So she told me it look daisy like? I even misunderstood how to propagate it. You are supposed to propagate this stem horizontally but this novice gardener did it vertically. No easy task digging in clay soil for 50cm depth to stick in these stem which Lenay had to help as I was busy in school. Shhh…she does not know yet that it is suppose to be horizontal as I just read about it today. Lenay thought I brought back sugar cane at first. Well I thought the same thing too when I saw this stem at first. The stem is bamboo like but look similar to sugar cane if you spend your childhood in the tropics that will be first thing on your mind. How nice will it be to bite and munch on sugar cane.

So for future reference, here is a link on how to propagate tree dahlia. But we were lucky even we propagated it totally in the wrong direction, the plant did sprouted new shoots.

New shoots sprouted from the nodes.

If we had grown the stem horizontally, we probably have a clump of tree dahlia now. Oh well, there is next time.

The plants grow very slowly at first. This is how they look last March since grown from September last year.

A month later in April, it shoot up very fast.

Early May we see the first batches of buds appearing.

The first bloom in middle of May. I was so excited because it is mauve my favourite colour like the colour of my wedding dress. However, I can’t really see how the bloom actually look like since it is facing my neighbour backyard. Coincidently, that week we have local fruit and vegetable swap meetings and I had the chance to tell Barbra about her wonderful gifts blooming in our garden now. How I finally know that this is tree dahlia blooming in my garden? I borrowed some last year May gardening magazine publication from our local library and it had an article what kind of flowers usually bloom at different region in Australia in May. The tree dahlia photo in the magazine is very familiar to my eyes now.

This tree dahlia is facing our kitchen window, so we have a nice view while cooking. Notice why I am cooking more lately. A very tall plant more than 3 metre tall. Glad that the fence will help protect from the winds.  I read it continuously bloom in winter, I dearly hope so. A very nice colour to have in the garden during winter even on cloudy days.

We are not the only admirer of this tree dahlia. Bees love them too. We have so many bees busy buzzing around this tree dahlia to sips its nectar before the weather gets really cold. We are so delighted that we still see so many bees buzzing in early winter. We don’t see any bees last year in end autumn or early winter when we did not have this tree yet growing in our garden.

I hope this week I have convinced you more thinking about local swap group in you area. See what wonderful gifts that I had received and learn so many new plants from so many generous gardeners.

Linking with Tracie Cottage Floral Thursday at Fishtail Cottage.

Ewa likes purple so linking with Flowers on Saturday for this week.