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Carpe Dahlia Flower Farm

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Grand Ledge, MI
Carpe Dahlia Flower Farm

Throughout the growing seasons we offer mixed bouquets, straight bunches of flowers for special order

03/15/2026

Dahlia cutting season has officially kicked off here at Carpe Dahlia where I try to turn less than 100 tubers into 1200 plants. Due to conflicting priorities I didn’t start in February when I usually try to, but when does farming ever go to plan? Two weeks in and I’m at about 10% of my goal. I don’t like to take cuttings in May so that means about 6 more weeks for the tubers to put out sprouts which can be rooted into mother plants, which is when the propagation kicks off even faster.

Growing from cuttings is one of the key steps I take to grow virus free. In addition to monitoring for plant health, I test one plant of each variety for the most common dahlia viruses - DMV/DCMV, TSV and TSWV. Starting from tested plants ensures each generation of my breeding patch is starting out healthy, and propagating cuttings lets me grow the number of plants I want while keeping the testing costs reasonable.

Pictured: recently cleaned from virus Brian R plants growing indoors to propagate additional cuttings.

01/25/2026

This dahlia was a microscopic meristem culture in March of 2025. In September it was big enough to be rooted and in October it tested negative for DMV, while the original tuber tested positive.

I think it’s interesting that the first tip cutting that I took rooted and branched out as fast as the lateral shoots grew on the original mother plant. I was able to take 8 cuttings off both plants today - both to keep then at a manageable size for growing indoors as well as to increase my stock.

I will grow it out this summer to make sure that the flower held true but then I will be able to share one more virus tested dahlia variety.

01/10/2026

Counting down the days to last frost on a rather gray January day.

01/03/2026

Three of the varieties that I took meristem tissue cultures on have started to form shoots out of the callus (which the meristem grew into, you might need to zoom in a bit to see the baby shoots). I don’t usually have this much callus but I tried using less growth hormones this year and this was the result. I need to keep these little tips growing without contamination, then root the, and then do virus testing to ensure the DMV is gone.

I still have a few more varieties that survived meristem culture taking their time and not growing super fast. I’m planning to pot them up into new media this weekend to hopefully kickstart some faster growth.

It’s a slow process, but each one is an additional variety to add to my “clean” patch.

01/01/2026

My talented daughter took one of my dahlia photos of Carpe Dahlia Summer Blush and turned it into a fabulous painting for Christmas. I tell her often that I breed flowers because I like making beautiful things but can’t paint.

now to convince her that I need a full series of these…

1. Acrylic painting of Carpe Dahlia Summer Blush
2. reference photo from my garden
3. It’s place of honor on the shelves

Carpe Dahlia Summer Blush is the first dahlia I have released. It is available through in the US in January and in Canada in February.

11/30/2025

I am missing having flowers to look at, but I’m still able to somehow spend a decent amount of my free time playing with dahlias over the winter.
I took the time this long weekend to transfer my tissue culture dahlias into fresh media. I have about 20 varieties that are in process of having DMV removed through meristem culture as well as four varieties I took shoot tips from last fall that tested clean. The meristems are growing out until they are big enough to root and get tested, hopefully adding newly cleaned varieties to my dahlia collection.

The four tested varieties are just an experiment to see how long it takes to propagate them with minimal hormones. Currently I propagate my existing varieties by the normal tuber/mother plant cuttings method, but it does take a fair amount of labor to keep everything properly watered/taking the cuttings at the right time. Tissue culture dahlias basically grow on their own except every 6-8 weeks when you subculture them, and so I’m trying to document the time/effort/costs between the two methods. Since I already have the tissue culture supplies and the growth chamber for the virus cleaning effort, it might be a good option to me to increase the amount of each variety and keep things virus free.

11/15/2025

My virus testing results came back and I am happy to announce that I have added Brian R to my list of varieties that I have removed DMV through meristem tissue culture. This plant was cultured in March, and as of November I have a rooted plant as well as the first top cutting. I will work to keep the plants happy over the winter (powdery mildew is a danger even in my basement) and then will grow out the plants next summer to make sure the bloom/plant habit didn’t mutate noticeably in culture. In the fall of 2026 I would have clean tubers available to share.

Cleaning virus is a slow process, but large scale testing of growers who grow clean stock in moderate isolation have shown that you can keep your dahlias in a highly clean state. The biggest challenge is meeting the demand for all the different types of dahlias that are actually clean, so people don’t have to choose between growing the dahlia they want and growing virus free/virus reduced.

What varieties would you like to see available as virus free plants?

10/25/2025

I collected buckets of dahlia seed pods the last two nights in advance of the frost warnings. We did have a mild frost the first week in October but only the seedling patch was affected and for the most part the breeding patch was spared. Having those extra three weeks of seed pod development was so helpful, and I’m looking forward to seeing how many seeds I have. Breaking apart seed pods is my favorite evening activity in the fall.

10/17/2025

Each day I still have dahlias seems like a blessing. It looks like one more week before the next frost, so I’m actually cutting more blooms as I know they won’t have a chance to make a seed pod.

Dahlias include Coseytown Malibu, KA’s Cinder Rose, and my favorite second year seedling which is absolutely pumping out blooms still in October. It is a lovely salmon pink color and I think deserves to get a name.

10/13/2025

The breeding dahlia patch survived low temps last week with only mild browning while the seedling patch was hit by frost more - over 50% of the leaves are brown and the plants and flowers are sad. The two patches are only separated by about 100 ft and are the same elevation, so I don’t really understand the why, but I’m also not going to complain that my seeds in the breeding patch have more days (weeks?) to develop.

1. A second year seedling I love for lots of reasons but think it needs to be line bred for more rows of petals and likely won’t be released.
2. Carpe Dahlia Summer Blush makes really nice seed heads (and good seedlings!)
3. This second year seedling hasn’t slowed down with the cooler weather and shorter days. It’s still crazy full of flowers and stretching to over 6.5 ft tall.

10/01/2025

For the second year in a row I have been happy with the seedlings I have gotten from my newly released variety Carpe Dahlia Summer Blush. The keepers all share the qualities from their momma that I like - strong stems, good bloom attachment, lots of blooms, the blooms extend above the plant habit, and depth of color.

Carpe Dahlia Summer Blush is being grown and shared by with shipping in spring of 2026.

Address

10875 N Royston Road
Grand Ledge, MI
48837

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