Seeds Started, Now What?

Large Dahlia plants ready to go outside.

Back in January I had the bright idea to raise dahlias from seed to sell as cut flowers at our local farmers market.  Dahlias make big, showy flowers that last forever in a vase.  Most people buy them as tubers and you plant them as you would potatoes. But dahlias can also be grown from seed, will bloom the same year if you start them indoors and will produce tubers you can save for next year.

I wanted to have about 750 stems of dahlia flowers to sell so a couple of $5.00 packages of seed seemed like a better way to go then shelling out a couple of hundred dollars for tubers.

The seed catalog said start the seed indoors 8 to 10 weeks before your last frost date to get flowers by July. I set up my grow lights and planted 150 dahlia seeds on March 1.  I planted tall dahlias (2 to 3 feet) and short dahlias (10 to 12 inches).  Now its March 31 and I have some very big seedlings and some small seedlings and am wondering if the market will be open in May.  Whatever happens with Covid 19, I'm going to have lots of dahlias.

Short dahlia plants coming along slowly