It is already the last half of October, although the Dahlia tubers have already been taken out of the ground here and are safely stored in a dry, frost-free place, I hear from others that they simply leave the tubers in the ground to overwinter, sometimes covered with straw, tree leaves or even buckets with straw underneath.
All different methods, but sometimes with different results.
For me it has always been a matter of pulling them out of the ground. The people at my vegetable garden once left them in the ground for a year and covered it with tree leaves, but in February / March they threw another pack of leaves over it, they may have suffocated because of the 15 tubers only three came back as plants, too bad!
But if you don't have the space to store the tubers frost-free, then you look for other options. Maybe if that extra pack of leaves hadn't been put on in March, it would have gone better. Of course you hear different sounds from: "We never cover them" to other options. Moreover, it also depends on where you live, in the east it often freezes much harder than in the west, for example.
Fortunately, everyone has their own experience in keeping the tubers and if it doesn't work, you can buy new tubers.
Of course it is always nice to buy tubers as well, sometimes you see really beautiful colours that you don't have yet and before you know it you have another beautiful one.
Once I bought the 'Lady Darlene', a beautiful Dahlia , decorative, with yellow and red/orange in the petals, a flower to fall in love with.
You can also sow dahlias , it is not certain what colour will come out, I have already sown a bag of mixed dahlia seeds in a greenhouse by placing one seed every 8 cm, that worked fine, everything came up and they became beautiful plants that formed a beautiful tuber within the first year.
Seeds from your own Dahlias do not always work, yes, the single-flowered ones, that went fine, it became a true feast of colours, but I still find the full, double Dahlias more beautiful and so I once tried to get seeds from the 'lady Darlene' and that worked, I was able to get 5 seeds from them, sowed them the following year, from these also came double and single Dahlias in the colours yellow, red, orange and one that looked like the Darlene, in any case the same splendid colours.
Of course it is easier to buy or order Dahlia tubers. I saw on the site of moestuinweetjes that they also sell Dahlia tubers, there are some very nice varieties among them, beautiful! Maybe I should order a few new ones when ordering vegetable seeds and seed potatoes . They will be delivered in the new year and just like the other summer bulbs on the site, they often go into the ground from mid-April.
You don't have to plant them very deep, nor too far apart, unless you just want to place them somewhere in the border, but in the vegetable garden or in my home garden, I plant them about 40cm apart, so that they support each other and don't fall over so easily.
Then it is often recommended to top the plants so that they do not grow too tall, my experience with this has not really been a success, previously I always let them grow as they were, last year I topped them on the advice of someone from a Dahlia club, they then became somewhat lower, but larger bushes and the flowering was disappointing.
Here too, experiences will differ. For a beautiful bloom, you should always cut off all the dead flowers, I sometimes forget that too…
In the spring of this year (2022) I no longer dragged the Dahlias to the vegetable garden, but planted them at home in the backyard.
They all came up nicely and grew well, but because there is less light in the back garden, the garden is narrow between an apartment and a fence, they grew towards the light and indeed became much taller than normal. In this case I should have topped them, but due to illness I could not do anything in the garden and so Dahlias came up to 1.80m high above the fence and of course they were not very sturdy. Then came the drought, I could not water them, so they did not become more beautiful.
Fortunately I was able to do this again in early September and they came back into bloom and I could enjoy these beautiful plants. Also a very nice cut flower.
Although they have already been stored here, I still see beautiful flowering Dahlias here and there. They can still flower until the beginning of November if the weather is good, but after that it is more or less over and you can keep them in your own way.
There are several types available in different heights, take a look at the site, there are bound to be some that you really like.
The site will soon be updated for orders for 2023, also take a look at the other flowers, vegetable seeds or seed potatoes , it is always an exciting time of planning and ordering, but a lot of fun to do.
Wim Boers.
