Dahlias: latest & greatest
If I could only grow one family of flowers, it would be Dahlias. Rich colors, velvety textures, endless variations, robust production. When the rest of the garden is falling on its knees, dahlias rise in all their glory. Those potato-like tubers you dropped in the ground in the spring and then forgot about are now churning out blooms daily.
Dahlias brighten the late summer garden.
I explained to guests at a recent Bouquet Tour that you can tuck your dahlia tubers into the average Reno landscape and call it your cutting garden. Dahlias pair well with common landscape ingredients like grasses, dried seed pods, stems of nine bark, stems of turning leaves and fall blooming landscape perennials like Caryopteris, Solidago, Echinops, Helenium, Agastache and Japanese Anemones. All these textural ingredients play up the velvety drama of dahlias.
Late summer landscape stalwarts like yellow solidago, penstemon pods, blue globe thistle and switch grass compliment dahlias, zinnias, sunflowers and celosia.
I grow mostly ball dahlias, because they offer longer vase life - maybe five to seven days. I also grow some of the voluptuous yet short-lived (3 or 4 days) dahlias for fun. My guests on Bouquet Tours and my subscribers want to see and feel the fancy dahlias, but they know they may need to pluck them out after three or four days when they start to wilt.
Drift Farm guests make amazing bouquets.
Recent guests designed spectacular arrangements with the above mentioned ingredients. The annuals that made the designs even better include Zinnias, Sunflowers and Celosia. (I call them the Holy Trinity because I cannot live without them.) The Trinity have much longer vase lives than most dahlias.
Tall Celosia can be hard to find at the nursery, but you can start them indoors from seeds in April. The goal is to get a 5-inch plant to put out after your last frost and then pinch. With good soil, regular water and lots of hot days, they become the workhorse ingredient in August with vivid colors and grainy textures.
My favorite celosia seeds from Johnny's are Celway Purple and Terracotta.
Dahlias and the Trinity will all be flattened by frost. Alas, the Trinity will need to be started again from seeds or plugs next spring. But the Dahlias are going to pay you dividends if you dig, divide and store over the winter. Yup, just like potatoes.
People often ask about leaving the tubers in the ground over the winter. I’ve had good luck experimenting with overwintering. However, I’ve curated my dahlias to a group of favorites, totaling more than 200 plants this year, so the tubers (some worth as much as $20) represent a significant investment, and leaving them in the ground to overwinter is risky. Excessive moisture could rot them. Colder than usual temperatures could destroy them. For 2024, I will dig, divide, and store. You have to ask yourself if you’re greedy for more dahlias or if you want throw caution to the wind and avoid the hassle of storing.
Dahlias: the latest & greatest garden blooms.