Tag: Planting

We have had a tough week at Wishful Thinking Farm. We have had to dig up and dispose of over 40 dahlias out of the ~290 that are sprouted in the garden, because they were showing signs of virus.

We had started most of these in our new greenhouse, to get a head start on our growing season. Unfortunately, we had packed the greenhouse pretty tightly, and in addition to the dahlias we brought in some tomato starts. One of them didn’t look great to begin with and eventually they all showed signs of tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV).

Dahlias can catch viruses, which are typically spread by thrips and mites. If you don’t remove an infected plant and control the bugs, the bugs can feed on it and then go feed on a healthy plant and give it the virus. Sometimes the plant can fight it off, sometimes it can’t. Some of our dahlias appeared to have TSWV.

Here are some photos of the plants we removed. We have test strips coming to confirm the diagnosis, but to avoid further spread we removed these plants as soon as we realized what we were looking at.

We have lost over 30 unique varieties to suspected virus so far, because we only had one or two tubers of the variety, and they showed signs of infection. The prudent thing to do, even if it’s only 1 or 2 leaves on an otherwise healthy plant, is to completely dispose of an infected plant to avoid further spread. Fortunately, we’ve found some late season tuber sales and have made some purchases to fill in some gaps. Many varieties are gone, but at least we won’t have big holes in the dahlia bed.

What did we learn?

• Order more than one tuber of new varieties you really want.
• Keep a quarantine area for new plants. Plants can come *with* virus and once you have something like TSWV it’s tough to get it stopped.
• Don’t overstuff your greenhouse and don’t introduce other plants when sprouting tubers. Just sprout the tubers.
• Use blue and yellow sticky cards to catch and monitor thrips, and use spray when you find them.
• Remove sickly looking plants right away. Otherwise you risk spreading virus to healthy plants and making them sick too.

Here’s a lecture on dahlia viruses in case you want to watch it too.

Varieties we have lost so far:

1. AC Ben
2. Apple Blossom (Only one)
3. Azteca
4. Black Satin
5. CDP Lavender Girl (Only one)
6. Cornel (Only one)
7. Coseytown Bounty (Only one)
8. Coseytown Dexter (Only one)
9. Coseytown Penny (Only one)
10. Daydreamer (Only one)
11. Deputy Bob (Only one)
12. Diva X3 (All I had)
13. GG’s Orange Slice (Only one)
14. Giggles x2
15. Gloriosa (Only one)
16. Harvey Koop (Only one)
17. Hollyhill Margarita (Only one)
18. Hot Tamale x2 (Only ones)
19. Hy Suntan (Only one)
20. Ice Tea (Only one)
21. Jowey Linda x2 (Only ones)
22. Kasasagi (Only one)
23. Koppertone (Only one)
24. Mikayla Miranda (Only one)
25. Mystique x2 (Only ones)
26. N-Force (Only one)
27. Ova-Jo (Only one)
28. Pooh
29. Rebecca Lynn (Only one)
30. Santander (Only one)
31. Shadow Cat (Only one)
32. Silver Years (Only one)
33. Steve Meggos X2 (Only ones)
34. Teddy
35. Tutti Fruitti
36. Valley Porcupine (Only one)
37. Verrone’s Obsidian (Only one)
38. Vixen (Only one)
39. Wayne L (Only one)
40. Wine-Eyed Jill
41. Wyn’s New Pastel