I always wish at this time of year that I grew more dahlias. Older gardens have the most glorious clumps of them, often supported by canes and string, and in such large groups that you can tell they’ve been growing happily there for decades. They just don’t behave so well for me – my soil’s very lean and the slugs are voracious – so unless I buy new each season or grow them from tubers, I have to admire them from afar.
Dahlias went through a few decades of not being in fashion, but thankfully they are now back with a bang, and nothing else flowers so late and so flamboyantly. They make brilliant blooms for cutting and the more you cut them the more they grow. They typically flower from midsummer right up until the first frosts, so they can be going strong well into October. Frost will turn the stems and leaves black and that’s it for the current year, but the tubers will spring into life in spring of the following year and away they go.
Because they’re not hardy, traditionally tubers were lifted, dried out and stored for winter, before being started into growth under cover in spring and planted out afresh each year. In practice though, unless you live pretty far from the sea, our climate is so mild that most tubers will survive in the ground, especially if a thick mulch is applied for extra protection. The most likely source of damage is from slugs, who can decimate the tender new shoots as they emerge in spring, before they even reach above ground – unfortunately this is the way most of mine have been nobbled.
If you’re not dedicated enough to grow them from tubers, dahlias can be sourced in pots from good garden centres – a good way to keep colour going in the garden right up until November.
ANNE’S TIP OF THE WEEK: When deadheading dahlias, it can be tricky to tell which are the new buds and which are the spent flower heads, as both are the same colour – new buds should be round while the old flower heads are typically pointy, so snip them off to keep the flowers coming.
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