Not a lot to report. Most of the seedlings are still young of the newly planted. Of the seeds I had collected I had 3 more sprout. Not great germination rate but I'm learning as I go and I think I may have collected them when they weren't quite mature enough. My plan this year is to leave the second blooms on the plants and let them go earlier. The most I got from my seeds were the seedheads I didn't realize until I was cutting back. These were usually the ones in crazy spots I would miss but evidently the bees did not.
It's to hit 70° today in my area which is delightful. I'm ready for winter to truly shove on out of here. Hopefully in the next few days I'll have bigger plants to share. You can only look at so many seedlings and say divine! 🌿
Who would have thought a few short days ago I'd end up with as many sprouts. I'll be reworking my garden layout to accommodate these little guys and hope they continue to do well.
I was asked how I move the seedlings from the lil6ers and will try to do a photo journey when it's time to move these to the next pots. I found what works for me and my little setup.
My next challenge is to rearrange under the lights. As I'm limited to light source length to my shelf length; throw in that I'm also not wanting to overwhelm the electric with so many lights, timer, fan or heat mat. Crazy. My friends on one of the threads laughs when I say it's time to buy a lotto. I would really love more land and a greenhouse! As is, my land is a small town city lot that has a fort for the kids and some room for them to play, my garden and flower beds. I cram and jam when it comes to it all. So a lotto win would be delightful! I even have the greenhouse picked out: one of those British Hartleys. Oh a girl can dream.
What I can use is my little greenhouse shelf once it's warmer at night outside. Of course in theory I should really have a bigger one or multiple shelves. I have a lot of dahlias. And this seed starting adds to it all.
I'm off to go tend to the littles and see what I have growing. See how many new sprouts and get my sink pots ready to pot up. And, I await the tubers coming in the mail. Oh - totally ready for spring and getting things into the dirt outside!
So I did some reading and experimenting and I'm choosing to say with the seeds that the white is not a mold. I left part of my seeds above ground so I decided to give a tug with the white things and they tugged back.
In my readings half of what I read was mold oh get rid of them before you have a mess. And the other half of what I read said young roots leave them alone.
I'm choosing this philosophy and will see what happens over the next week. If I have sprouts fantastic. If it is indeed mold I'll have a mess. I do have more seeds so I'm not too worried.
As I've said, this is my year to experiment and see what seed growing in the dahlia garden will do. We learn by doing. Well I should preface, I learn by doing!
Happy day all! 
I'm not really sure what to think. I saw the same thing happen with the FM seeds and then a few days later I had sprouts. Here's the deal:
It's not the best photo, but there is that white hairy thing. That's my seed. I left a bit of the seed exposed above the dirt line so I can keep an eye on what's going on. This is how I did my seeds (after the paper towel method didn't agree with my seeds) and with the FM seeds and all of them that sprouts have done this. It's like a whiteish spider web just by the seed (maybe a hairy mold?) and then I find shortly thereafter a day or two I have a sprout. Is this how the seed breaks down to send out a sprout? I've no clue. My seeds are in well dampened pro-mix on a heat mat with a humidity dome. Maybe these guys are rotting, but I'd have to disagree thus far as I have about 25 4-8" plants already with the past seeds.
And in case you ask, I have the first seedling from the bunch of seeds I received the other day:
And if you have great eyesight and you look to the left of the white plant tag by the sprout you'll see another hairy seed pile. I will try to take a picture of how many of these I've got going on and if indeed I end up with sprouts soon.
I was in receipt today of the dahlia seeds from a fellow dahliahead I've met on the site. Shout out to @luvsgrtdanes
So I got home from work, ate my dinner the hubs pulled together and got crackalackin on potting up the seeds. I only planted half of what was sent, I chose to use the plumptys for this batch and limited myself to 30 seeds potted up.
They are now in the lil6ers and joining what remained of my own collected seeds that I planted the other day. I of course ran out of plant tags so for the present, cut up a recycled cottage cheese tub and grabbed my china marker and got them all named. They now are all back on the heat mat with the humidity dome. I will be gone first thing tomorrow morn and hopefully that gives them all enough time to start figuring it out and sprouting by Sunday.
I do hope all of these do well, but I'm sure my remaining seeds will be duds. I will be letting buds go to seed a lot earlier this summer. Who knew it can take so long to make a developed seed? Evidently it does take longer if you want them to germinate and grow. I'll have to see if I can find anything that says how long it may take to produce a viable dahlia seed. It would be good information to know.
So my great experiment continues. Maybe I'll come home to a ton of little sprouts. I've got 60 awaiting some growth. And yes I'm crazy trying this many!
Happy Easter to everyone and welcome spring with open arms. Of course right now we still have 50 mph gusts. Really now, it's time for some warmth and a gentle spring breeze earth! 🌎
