Watching my dahlias grow the last few years, has taught me a couple of things about that flower. I imagine I’m just starting to scratch the surface of dahlia knowledge 🙂
In first year, one flower topped one stem on each plant.
During the second summer, two blossoms appeared. This is now the third spin around the sun for these plants, and there are 4 buds per plant. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high that the number of flowers will double again next year, as it has annually, so far.
These two plants live in different flower beds, around the house.
On a southwest facing corner, which is shaded in the morning, the red one grows.
The pink flowered plant gets sun all day long. All of my flowers are shaded in the late afternoon by evergreen trees at the edge of our forest. As the trees have grown from seedlings in the past 35 years, my yard gets a bit more shady every summer.
susansflowers 
July 30, 2016 at 11:11 pm
How lovely! I have never grown Dahlias because I can only remember the struggle my mom had with the slugs!
August 20, 2016 at 4:07 am
I rarely have slug issues here. Whatever my garden pest complaints, few of those, so far!