Today let’s compare Bloomquist Pumpkin and Bloomquist Jean. These two beautiful hybrids, both created by our dear friend Paul Bloomquist, have more than a few similarities and they are both part of our Legacy Program.
Bloomquist Jean, classified as an informal decorative dahlia, has slightly larger blooms and is a taller plant than Bloomquist Pumpkin. Pumpkin is officially classified as a stellar form dahlia, but you can see in our videos that the forms of these two blooms are not drastically different. Bloomquist Pumpkin starts blooming earlier, and produces more blooms overall for us than Bloomquist Jean.
Jean’s flippy, twisty-twirly petals turn heads in any garden lucky enough to have her, and Pumpkin’s graceful reflexing petals and depth/ variation of color make it a highly sought-after variety. Bloomquist Jean is a deep orange, often with lighter orange petals near the front of the bloom at the end of the season. Bloomquist Pumpkin has layers of orange, light orange, and golden yellow petals early in the season, and darker orange-red to orange petals when days are shorter. No matter which end of the season you find it, Pumpkin is “fall in a flower,” with stunning mixes of autumn colors.????????????
Neither Bloomquist Jean nor Bloomquist Pumpkin are particularly bountiful tuber-producers for us, but their tubers do keep well and wake up reliably to grow on the next spring.
Have you grown either of these beautiful varieties? Which is your favorite?