Dahlias, a love hate relationship
I seriously love Dahlias. They are beautiful showy plants that really bedazzle a garden. There’s nothing subtle about a dahlia. They range from Pom poms to dinner plates (with obvious sizing) I’ve only grown them for a year now but I have a number of lessons already.
Pinching them out- dahlias grow tall if you let them, like 3-4 feet tall. Which has a couple of problems. First they need to be staked if you have them that tall, but they can also get a bit focused on the top flower. By pinching them out (when they grow leaves pinch out the middle one of the three) they will get bushier. Wider, more flowers, more stable. This also applies if you want to grow them in pots in the spring as you wait for the soil to warm up (I’ll get to that), pinching them out in the puts grows lots of strong stems for when the time comes. My first year I had a serious case of flopping dahlias, we shall see this year!
They are Sensitive little buggers- here in 6b (toronto) dahlias are not winter hardy. You leave them over winter and they will rot in the cold wet soil. So you have to baby them. You can’t plant them til at least the May long weekend, and you have to remove them after the first frost. How do you know when? Well the foliage will go black. Literally. It’s obvious. But you can’t just yank them out of the ground, they are fragile. You need to dig a hole 1 foot around the dahlia, then carefully remove the dirt to store. I didn’t do this, I yanked, I cut corners and frankly lost a third of them. Do not do it like me.
Storing Dahlias. Again, fussbudgets. Once you remove the dirt, you store them in a cool dark place. In what you ask? IT DEPENDS. I stored mine in sawdust, in our storage room. So that went badly. They came out looking like wrinkly old man testicles. Okay fine I haven’t seen old man testicles but this is what I imagine they would look like. They need enough moisture to not shrivel up, and that will depend on the moisture of your room and the medium. So the choices are sawdust, newspaper (which I am trying next year) and sterile potting mix. You want to store not grow. And oh yeah, you’re supposed to check on them monthly, which I am sure would have resulted in less old men in my batch. You can then soak them to bring them back but who’s kidding who, an ounce of prevention! PS label them for the love of god. They all look the same as tubers.
hungry bastards- these are heavy feeding plants. You need to feed them weekly with heavy nitrogen fertiliser, I use a seaweed fertiliser from sea boost.
so it sounds like I am whining, which is true, but don’t be dissuaded. These flowers are stunning, they are the jewels of my garden, and I will make the effort, and I suggest you do too. Check out the pics below for inspiration…
