This is our main Dahlia garden. Mike has about 70 Dahlias here, and another 30 in the auxiliary garden.
To say that we’ve got Dahlias would be an understatement. At the beginning on October, the Dahlia garden is in its final glory. Each of the many flowers is screaming for deserved attention. The heat of this years Summer was especially hard on the plants, but the beginning of October is still as good as it gets. No more work. Pure enjoyment.
To say that the season is almost over is also an understatement. Because when they are gone, they are really gone. It takes one frost and one frost only to devastate the Dahlia beds. In Chicago, we can expect the first frost to come in about two weeks.
If you must work in the Dahlia garden, remove any buds that aren’t about ready to bloom. This allows the plant to focus the remaining energy on perfecting the flowers that are ready to bloom. Its sad to know that those buds will not have time to flower. Sad, but true. We won’t go there now. That’s what the next dahlia article will be about.
For now, lets enjoy…
I was just wondering, do you start your Dahlias inside early in buckets & then bury them? Or is that just rings in the photo?
Thanks so much,
Meli
The buckets were an experiment. THey are really just the top 5″ of buckets, with the intent being we could water within the ring and be very direct about placement. In the long run, we didn’t see a benefit. We start our dahlias in the basement in February/March and take many cuttings from the sprouts that emerge. Eventually, they become plants to go in the ground after frost is done
what a gorgeous garden. I’m just ready to lift my blackened dahlias for the season – I tend to only lift the $$ (or most-beloveds), like Café au Lait and the glorious Labyrinth!
You’re in Chicago (which is where I’m from as well) – do you lift ALL those dahls? What a daunting task!
Yes, we really do lift all those dahlias and store them for the winter. We are down to growing about 65. We used to have a second dahlia garden that was just as big. We have just the right area to store them. The ideal temperature of 40 – 50 degrees is not something most Chicagoland growers have. Mike built an enclosed area in our attached garage and even so monitors the temperature to remove the dahlias for a few days here and there when our weather is at its coldest.