The Dahlia Wars
March 3, 2024 7:42 AM Subscribe
What value do we put on labour and can you copyright a tuber? Loved this glimpse of a fervent hobby and the associated economy, with shades of tulipmania delving into thoughtful comments on what it means to make a living from what you love.
This is a fascinating read. And a good example of what I love about the internet (especially old school forum-style internet): there's a place for each sub-sub-culture to flourish in all its complexities, ugliness, and beauty.
posted by johnxlibris at 9:13 AM on March 3
posted by johnxlibris at 9:13 AM on March 3
Online economics, many kinds of work get easier as more and more people join your thing. (Lazyweb, virality, long tail.) Material economics, that's only true until you hit resource competition.
Cheap money spent a decade trying to make the latter act like the former, and now what? Plus, big cohorts grow up with the online-economics effect in education/publishing/entertainment, and then get thrown really hard into the opposite system in material economics. Having both of these effects happen at once: "Entitled to Cheapness". (Not that this is at all unique to boomers and millenials, but there's a reason both huge generations thought it was natural. It had been, for them, for a decade!)
Specific to dahlias... I live in the PNW too, and am becoming a vegetable farmer, and you know what makes even less money than flowers? Feeding people. It is utterly mystifying how expensive food is for eaters and how many parts of the system are hideously precarious for the producers.
posted by clew at 11:52 AM on March 3 [3 favorites]
Cheap money spent a decade trying to make the latter act like the former, and now what? Plus, big cohorts grow up with the online-economics effect in education/publishing/entertainment, and then get thrown really hard into the opposite system in material economics. Having both of these effects happen at once: "Entitled to Cheapness". (Not that this is at all unique to boomers and millenials, but there's a reason both huge generations thought it was natural. It had been, for them, for a decade!)
Specific to dahlias... I live in the PNW too, and am becoming a vegetable farmer, and you know what makes even less money than flowers? Feeding people. It is utterly mystifying how expensive food is for eaters and how many parts of the system are hideously precarious for the producers.
posted by clew at 11:52 AM on March 3 [3 favorites]
The idea that some bargain basement wish dot com bullshit tubers can poison your whole garden and it can take over a year to realize is some heavy ass shit and must be absolutely hilarious to watch from a popcorn standpoint.
posted by Rhomboid at 12:04 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]
posted by Rhomboid at 12:04 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]
The Dahlia is my favorite flower. If anyone is in the Netherlands during the first weekend in September, head on over to Zundert and check out their flower parade. It's amazing artistry done all with Dahlias!
posted by LizBoBiz at 2:50 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]
posted by LizBoBiz at 2:50 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]
@clew oh I feel you hard on this topic.
I was first a fruit tree farmer, but no one wants to pay for food. So I added a you pick rose field which now subsidizes my attempt to feed people delicious, nutritious food. I'll say that again. I grow a luxury item to be able to afford to grow food.
Back to the article at hand. As I pointed out in that dahlia discussion (I am a Culture Study subscriber and big fan), you can patent plant varieties. The Karma series of dahlias are patented. And buying from random backyard breeders has a lot of the same inherent risks of getting puppies the same way. Just don't do it.
posted by birdsongster at 4:01 PM on March 3 [8 favorites]
I was first a fruit tree farmer, but no one wants to pay for food. So I added a you pick rose field which now subsidizes my attempt to feed people delicious, nutritious food. I'll say that again. I grow a luxury item to be able to afford to grow food.
Back to the article at hand. As I pointed out in that dahlia discussion (I am a Culture Study subscriber and big fan), you can patent plant varieties. The Karma series of dahlias are patented. And buying from random backyard breeders has a lot of the same inherent risks of getting puppies the same way. Just don't do it.
posted by birdsongster at 4:01 PM on March 3 [8 favorites]
Hmm now I want to grow some flowers but the only place I can really plant is near my front door with too much shade. On the other hand, maybe in a pot on the back porch. Next to my potted mint which I haven’t gotten yet.
posted by Glinn at 5:05 PM on March 3
posted by Glinn at 5:05 PM on March 3
I knew dahlias were a whole thing, mostly because I started following and ordering from Floret about 6 years ago back when she was still selling tubers. I waited on dahlias though, because I didn’t want to plant in my apartment garden. I have my own garden now and ordered the floret originals dahlia seeds. It will be an interesting experiment. I’ve never been much of a flower grower apart from marigolds to keep bugs away and zinnias. A few years ago I started growing more cut flowers and it’s really nice to have a bouquets of home grown flowers in the summer.
Anyway. This is my first summer in my new yard and I’m trying to make myself do less than usual until I figure out where the light is and make a plan to invest in perennials and garden infrastructure for my vegetables. I hope I don’t get too crazy into the flower world. I do see a need to grow the extra flowers—the greenery or frilly stuff that gives volume to a bouquet, not just the showstopper flowers.
posted by Bunglegirl at 7:17 PM on March 3
Anyway. This is my first summer in my new yard and I’m trying to make myself do less than usual until I figure out where the light is and make a plan to invest in perennials and garden infrastructure for my vegetables. I hope I don’t get too crazy into the flower world. I do see a need to grow the extra flowers—the greenery or frilly stuff that gives volume to a bouquet, not just the showstopper flowers.
posted by Bunglegirl at 7:17 PM on March 3
Gosh. So many parts of this are so good. But this is really going to stick with me:
“As customers, we’ve become so accustomed to massive-scale corporate buying experiences that we’ve lost the grace and empathy we’ve historically extended to smaller operations run by people we know and regularly see.”
posted by la glaneuse at 9:33 PM on March 3 [2 favorites]
“As customers, we’ve become so accustomed to massive-scale corporate buying experiences that we’ve lost the grace and empathy we’ve historically extended to smaller operations run by people we know and regularly see.”
posted by la glaneuse at 9:33 PM on March 3 [2 favorites]
A niche topic that is actually about so much more... As someone who tends to be, if I may use the contradiction in terms, prone to mild grand obsessions and just spent time the day before searching for dahlia gardens on YouTube, this is great. I wouldn't presently be able to get into growing dahlias, but I love their amazing colors and endless variety...maybe some day.
posted by blue shadows at 11:37 PM on March 3
posted by blue shadows at 11:37 PM on March 3
la glaneuse called out: “As customers, we’ve ...lost the grace and empathy we’ve historically extended to smaller operations run by people we know and regularly see."
We hired a guy to do some work on the house a couple of years ago. He worked hard and had high standards, and it was great: he was fairly new to being his own boss, and it was exciting to see someone honest being rewarded for their hard work. Plus he lived one street away!
He also threw away all of the paperwork for my siding, which is 100% required in order to register the stuff for the manufacturer's warranty.
I explained this "issue" to him gently, and suggested that he maybe not gut-shoot future customers this way. (I had also snuck out to the driveway the night before, and photographed the paperwork carefully, fearing exactly this -- because a previous contractor had screwed me this way a decade ago.) I didn't freak out because I knew one of the reasons we got a good price was his recent independence: he learned a good lesson, and I didn't mind being his safety net.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:32 AM on March 4 [4 favorites]
We hired a guy to do some work on the house a couple of years ago. He worked hard and had high standards, and it was great: he was fairly new to being his own boss, and it was exciting to see someone honest being rewarded for their hard work. Plus he lived one street away!
He also threw away all of the paperwork for my siding, which is 100% required in order to register the stuff for the manufacturer's warranty.
I explained this "issue" to him gently, and suggested that he maybe not gut-shoot future customers this way. (I had also snuck out to the driveway the night before, and photographed the paperwork carefully, fearing exactly this -- because a previous contractor had screwed me this way a decade ago.) I didn't freak out because I knew one of the reasons we got a good price was his recent independence: he learned a good lesson, and I didn't mind being his safety net.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:32 AM on March 4 [4 favorites]
I did not look at TFA and know nothing of dahlias, but was triggered by the question "can you copyright a tuber." Which leads to some questions about the distinctions between "inventing" something patentable, v "writing" or "composing" something copyrightable, and how if you look closely enough the distinction has collapsed for a lot of categories of "inventing." The full front-page post is beyond my limits to create but the conclusion is "in summary, allowing software to be patentable was a mistake."
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:09 AM on March 4
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:09 AM on March 4
It's interesting how much this overlaps with other labor/hobby economics. I've seen similar stories around plushy designers/collectors, foodies, drawings and other pockets of the arts. There's a pressure to turn all our hobbies into side gigs, to make things as cheap as Amazon, but then it is no longer as enjoyable and it's part of what turns us all into "content creators" on social media that people "consume" and it seems there's a similar cultural thing with gardeners of dahlias.
Patents/copyright is a tricky issue because on one hand the concept can be abused (eg scientists tried to patent a gene to milk money from other scientists working with that gene) but many people out there have been screwed over by not affording a patent or being forced to sign away their royalties, resulting in some asshats making millions off of something someone put a lot of work into--something that we all benefit from or enjoy--but only received pennies for. The gardening of new varieties of dahlias perhaps falls in that category.
posted by picklenickle at 8:35 AM on March 4 [1 favorite]
Patents/copyright is a tricky issue because on one hand the concept can be abused (eg scientists tried to patent a gene to milk money from other scientists working with that gene) but many people out there have been screwed over by not affording a patent or being forced to sign away their royalties, resulting in some asshats making millions off of something someone put a lot of work into--something that we all benefit from or enjoy--but only received pennies for. The gardening of new varieties of dahlias perhaps falls in that category.
posted by picklenickle at 8:35 AM on March 4 [1 favorite]
This is the first year i have grown dahlias (from Bunnings seedlings) and I am already hooked.
posted by pipstar at 5:02 AM on March 5
posted by pipstar at 5:02 AM on March 5
I love Dahlias. It's the official flower of San Francisco and there's a Dahlia garden in Golden Gate Park. I love seeing them bloom every summer, in so many different colors and styles.
posted by mike3k at 3:39 PM on March 5
posted by mike3k at 3:39 PM on March 5
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In my head I categorize this sort of thing as ‘classic New Yorker’ with a plunge into oranges or orchids that is really mostly about humans. I mean the line “why is this world I helped create so crappy” as a summary of how, as the section is titled “People Nevertheless Feel Entitled to Cheapness” is certainly not just about crazed flower discussion online.
posted by zenon at 8:03 AM on March 3