5 Dahlia Growing Mistakes We Made This Season

It’s the end of August and the dahlias are thriving! This season has certainly been an interesting one, and even though there was a slight delay, I’m glad the dahlias have made their way to the show. Dahlias are special to me because they are my favorite flower to grow. I think they’re so fun and so beautiful, but they do require a good deal of care. If you follow us on Instagram, you’ll see that I post pictures of armfuls and buckets of the dahlias we’re growing this season (yes, I’m oh, so very proud of them). However, the path to accomplish getting dahlias this season was certainly not a smooth one. Here are five mistakes we made this season with growing dahlias.

1. Planting Them Too Far Apart

My initial plan was to plant our dahlias tubers 12-inches apart. After going back-and-forth with my mom several times because she disagreed, I caved and agreed to plant at 18-inches apart (oh, the joys of working with family). This was a BIG mistake for two reasons. One, because we plant dahlias for cutting and not landscaping, we don’t need the larger spacing. Due to our pretty frequent harvests (at least three times a week), the plants remain a manageable width. With the larger spacing, we ended up using way more field space than I had initially planned for, which caused unnecessary delays and put us behind in our planting schedule. Two, the larger spacing also made way for every gardener’s worst enemy, WEEDS. Our farm plot has an insane amount of weed pressure. I’m not exaggerating. Every possible weed you can think of, I’m pretty sure we have. Combine that with the very wet Spring season we had this year, the weeds in our dahlia patch were absolutely out of control. We spent nearly three-weeks battling the weeds, which is too much time spent on one task. Needless to say, it was awful.

The lesson here: Listen to your instincts and trust your plan!

2. Corralling the Dahlias Too Late

Because the dahlia weeding mission took longer than expected, we had to play catch up with our other farm duties. This, then, led to us corralling the dahlias when they were pretty large already. Not good.

The lesson here: Corral your dahlias early when they are still young! It less labor-intensive and you’ll have less plants you need to recover.

3. Not Investing in Drip Irrigation

During the off-season I couldn’t make up my mind about whether or not to invest in drip irrigation for this season. Ultimately, I decided not to and I quickly regretted that decision. Hand watering 60 rows of dahlias is not fun, especially in the blazing heat. It is most definitely on my list for next season to invest in drip irrigation.

The lesson here: Invest in things that will help you work smarter, not harder.

4. Mystery Tubers = Unidentified Dahlia Varieties

I am proud to say that our current dahlias are from heirloom tubers. These dahlias have been in the family for 20 years and they were passed on to Nick and I. Although I am very grateful, the major downside was that we had no idea what variety any of the tubers were. Also, since the dahlias have been in the family for a long time, no one remembers the names of any of them. It feels almost impossible at this point to be able to identify them all, but I’m trying my best. I did purchase some tubers and labeled those at planting, but of course, that didn’t go according to plan either (read #5).

The lesson here: ‘Free’ always comes with a price.

5. Bad Labeling System

Gardening/farming is certainly not cheap. Things add up very quickly and if you’re not careful, it can be very easy to dig yourself into a hole. In an effort to curb our expenses, for garden labels, I decided to write on cheap paint sticks with a sharpie and stick them in the ground. This idea did not work for a few reasons. One, many of the sticks went missing after the dahlia weeding mission. Two, sharpies do not last outdoors. The names on some of the sticks are faded. Three, bending down to try to read a stick low to the ground can be annoying. Thankfully, because the varieties that were labeled were the ones I ordered, I can refer back to my order history to help me identify them.

The lesson here: Your garden labels should be at least 3 ft. tall to keep them visible during the growing season. Oh, and please use permanent garden markers.

Despite the many mistakes we made, I’m happy to report that we did do a few things right.

5 Things We Did Right with Growing Dahlias This Season

1. Regular Fertilizing

I love fish fertilizer. I think it does wonders for flowers and I like to use it when I am planting transplants. This season I have been doing a lot of research on sustainable pest management. I read that compost tea can help with pest management and decided to give it a try. I don’t have easy access to good compost and I did not want to make a brewer, but I did find an instant compost tea on Amazon. I mixed the fish fertilizer and compost tea together and foliar sprayed the dahlias every 1-2 weeks. When the dahlias started to form buds, I switched to soil drenching. This is my new power combo! Within two weeks I noticed a difference in our dahlias. I even sprayed this mix on the corn, melons, and gladiola I planted and it has made a difference in those too. The regular application of fish fertilizer and compost tea certainly helped us with having healthy dahlias and an abundance of blooms.

Tip: Apply foliar spray or soil drench in the evening when the temperature starts to drop. If foliar spraying, spray until the solution starts dripping off the leaves of the plant.

2. Beneficial Nematodes

I was doubtful of beneficial nematodes. I did not understand how they worked so my ignorance led me to write them off initially. What led me to change my mind and give them a try was reading Jessica Walliser’s books Good Bug Bad Bug and Plant Partners. I am so glad that I did. I believe the beneficial nematodes helped us tackle the dreaded cucumber beetles. They are definitely a key element I will be incorporating on our farm moving forward.

Tip: Apply to your soil in early Spring when the ground is not frozen, but still moist. Make sure to get the right kind of nematodes for whatever pests you are trying to target. I like this kind.

3. Cutting Deep

When I was first taught to harvest dahlias, I was taught to cut at the first node. The reason being because cutting any further risks having no blooms for the next harvest. I followed those directions, but I remember, that entire season, I had zero useable stems because they were all so short. This season, I threw all that out the window and decided to cut the dahlias according to the length in which I need them to make bouquets (about 14-16 inches). I realized I was cutting down to the third, sometimes even fourth node. Soon, our dahlias started to push out long branches, allowing me to harvest continuous flushes of dahlias with long, beautiful stems. Even my mom is impressed with the stem length I’m getting!

Tip: Make sure to pinch your dahlias when they are 10-12 inches tall to encourage branching.

 4. Organza Bags

Our first dahlias this season went straight to the compost because of the horrible damage caused by cucumber beetles. In addition to the compost tea and beneficial nematodes, I had to find something to remedy the situation fast. We don’t use any pesticides or synthetic chemicals on our farm, so anything in that category was out of the question. While scrolling through my Instagram feed one day, I saw Kristine Albrecht of Santa Cruz Dahlias use organza bags on her dahlias. I instantly hopped on Amazon and ordered them. Although not 100% effective, the organza bags are an affordable and pesticide-free solution for bug damage on dahlias. The one downside is that it is a rather time-consuming process to bag and un-bag dahlias.

 Tip: Put the organza bag on the dahlia when it is still in bud stage.

5. Doubling Down on Tool Hygiene, Harvest & Post-Harvest Practices

This one is probably the most vital of all the things we did right. Last season, we left our bucket washing task for the off-season, leading us to use hundreds of buckets. Let me tell you, having to wash hundreds of buckets at once sucks! That experience was enough to get us to keep up on our bucket washing this season. I also started cleaning our shears on a regular basis. I wash all buckets and shears with the FloralLife D.C.D. cleaner. I even clean our floral cooler and shelves with it. On top of improving bucket and tool hygiene, I structured our harvest and post-harvest processing operations. Before, Nick and I would harvest and process flowers individually. Meaning, we would harvest, then I would process all the flowers that I cut, and Nick would do the same for all the flowers that he cut. I found that tackling both tasks individually is cumbersome and inefficient for production. Since I prefer to harvest and Nick prefers to do the post-harvest processing, I figured, why not just play to our strengths? Now, I harvest, bring the flowers to Nick at the truck, and head back into the field to keep tackling the rows. At the truck, Nick fills the buckets with water, hydrating solution, and a CVBN tablet, grades the flowers, strips them of foliage, and puts the appropriate number of stems in each bucket before loading them into the truck. I stress appropriate number of stems because previously, we would try to shove as many stems as possible into a bucket. I don’t recommend stuffing a bucket too tightly because it can cause damage to the flowers. In any case, taking the time to refine our entire tool hygiene and harvest/post-harvest practices has added 2-3 days of vase life to our dahlias. Customers report back to us that our flowers last at least a week, sometimes even longer, which is great!

Tips: Tool hygiene - Spray FloralLife D.C.D cleaner on to bucket or shears and let sit for 5-10 minutes. Using a dish brush, scrub all surfaces and rinse with warm water (it says on the label that rinsing is not required but I do it anyway). Alternatively, you can clean buckets and shears with a mixture of Borax and Castille soap. I don’t like to use bleach because I have sensitive skin, but a diluted bleach solution is also an option.

Harvest – If possible, harvest dahlias in the evening, when temperatures start to cool. For me, that is around 5pm. At the ASCFG conference earlier this month, I attended a presentation led by Dr. John Dole of NCSU about harvest and post-harvest processing. Dr. John Dole’s research showed that flowers harvested in the evening had the longest vase life. Learn more about Dr. John Dole here.

 Post-harvest – Don’t take too long grading or stripping foliage on flowers! Dahlias will wilt if left out of water for too long.

Clearly, this season has been full of highs and lows. Regardless, we are determined more than ever to perfect how we grow our dahlias. We already have some ideas of what to change and implement for next season. Do you grow dahlias? Any tips you’d like to share? Comment below!

 I also want to mention, our CSA shares for next year (2023) are opening tomorrow! This is our early bird special, which means this is the lowest pricing that our CSAs will be offered at. After 9/30, prices will be increasing and registration will be closed until November. Be sure to register in September to lock in the best pricing on our CSAs! You can learn more about our CSAs here.

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Thanks for reading!

‘Til next time,

Tracy