Dahlia care

KATE TURNER @KATEATFLOURISH

Dahlias have become one of our favourite flowers to grow in the garden and to use as a cut flower for the home, and with so many varieties, forms and colours to choose, from the dinner plate size bloom of the Instagram favourite, ‘Café Au Lait’ to the less showy, popular pollinator plant, ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ there is a dahlia to suit every garden.

Although they can often be referred to as diva’s, dahlias are surprisingly easy to look after, and if you are growing dahlias this year and have managed to avoid slug and snail devastation, then there are a few care tips you need to follow to keep them looking their best and flowering their socks off from now through to October.

Feeding.

• Dahlias are hungry plants. To keep them throwing out bloom after bloom, they need to be fed regularly.

• If you are growing dahlias in the border, then you can add an organic granular feed around the base, gently forking it in and watering well,

• For plants in pots and containers, I always give them a weekly, liquid feed, alternating with a seaweed feed to keep the plant strong and healthy and an organic tomato feed that has extra potassium to promote flowering.

Staking

If you are growing any of the taller, heavier varieties like the dinner plate types then they need staking. Ideally, it’s always best to put in a framework at planting time but there are things you can do to help support any drooping stems:

• Use bamboo or hazel canes and tie each stem individually, being careful not to cut into the tuber

• Build a low framework around the base to support the whole plant.

• Use other plants in pots to support your dahlias. Shorter ornamental grasses work well as an invisible leaning post placed against dahlias. Try a grass such as ‘Miscanthu Yukeshima’ or Calamagrostis types.

Earwigs

As well as damage from slugs and snails, earwigs can cause problems for dahlias, eating the petals and crawling out unexpectedly from a bloom in a vase when you have friends round for supper!

Using a bamboo can inserted near your plants, stuff a terracotta or plastic pot full of straw and turn it upside down on top of the cane. The earwigs will crawl in and then the next day you can re locate them somewhere else in the garden. Never destroy them as they are useful predators, eating up aphids.

Flower power

Dahlias want to flower which is great news for us, but then they want to set seed and once they’ve done that they will stop flowering as there job is done. We need to keep deadheading the dahlias so they keep on producing buds rather than setting seed.

This is why deadheading (removing old flowerheads) constantly is so important if you want those beautiful blooms all summer long. Sometimes it can be hard to know which is a bud and which is a spent flowerhead, so read below to know how to easily identify the two.

• Spent flowerhead – These are cone shaped and might have a brown tinge to the point. If you squeeze it, liquid may come out. Remove these.

• Flower buds – These are round and much fatter and won’t ooze any liquid. Keep these!

Don’t just snip behind the flower head though, go down to the next set of leaves and snip there, this will encourage more flowers to grow.

Always use sharp snips or scissors so you’re not bruising or snagging the stems. Keep cutting!

Many of us grow dahlias as a cut flower to bring into the home or give as gifts. This means you can keep cutting your dahlia blooms throughout the summer and this will have the same effect as deadheading as you are constantly encouraging the plant to keep producing more flowers.

Ideally cut in the morning when the flower is at its freshest, again cutting down to below a set of leaves, but don’t pick any unopened flower buds as once picked they won’t open.

Follow these simple steps above and I guarantee you will have bloom after bloom of these beautiful garden diva’s!