Mid Summer Dahlia Care – Farm News

Dahlia Barn Fields

Now that summer is in full swing, here are some tips on dahlia care including watering, fertilizing, pinching and staking your dahlias to keep your dahlias blooming strong.  Your dahlias will bloom into October, or until you get a frost in your area.

Water:

Deep soak your dahlias 2-3 times per week this time of year.  They need a lot of water right now to continue to grow properly, and it’s hard to overwater them when they are about to bloom and are in bloom.  Hand watering is never enough, deep soak with a soaker hose for at least 1 hour in your dahlia bed.  If you have an irrigation system, a deep soak 2-3 times per week is better than a short soak every day.  For us this time of year, watering schedules are almost changed on a daily basis.  How’s the soil?  To dry in this area, turn the irrigation up.  Too moist in that area, turn the irrigation back.   It’s a constant dance.

Fertilize:

Now is a good time to give your dahlias one last fertilizing.  Use a granular fertilizer with a ratio as close to 5-10-10 as you can find.  Do not fertilize after August 15th, the dahlias won’t have enough time to absorb the fertilizer completely.

Pinching your dahlias for better growth and flower production:

This is most important for people in the Northern United States, whos dahlias are probably at bud stage.  For the southern and central United States, your dahlias have probably been in bloom for awhile now.  When cutting dahlias that are in bloom, focus on taking the center out of the plant, cut the blooms then cut the center out.

Pinching your dahlias will benefit in a few ways:

1)  It will keep your plant from getting so tall and top heavy.

2)  It will branch out your plant into 4 stems instead of one.

3)  You will get a much more manageable plant with more blooms

See our Dahlia Care page for more information on growing dahlias

Dahlia Barn owner Jerry Sherrill shows us how to properly pinch your dahlia plants.

Staking your dahlias:

Choosing the right staking method, depends on how you grow and plant your dahlias.  If you just have a few dahlias around your yard, you can stake or not stake.  If you

If your dahlias are planted in rows, 2 stakes at the end of each row works great.

choose not to stake, be sure to pinch like the example above.  This will keep your plant from getting too tall and falling over.  If you have many dahlias, and easy method for staking is to move towards planting in straight rows.  This way you can place 2 – t-posts at the end of each row and run twine between the stakes horizontally.  We usually will wait until the dahlias are a couple feet tall, then run the bottom string, like in the video above.  As they continue to grow, we’ll run the 2nd and 3rd string.  This gives insurance that a random wind or rain storm in September and October will not topple the dahlia plants.   But that only happens ONE time, never again.

Farm News:

This is the time of year where everything is about plant health and farm management.  Keeping weeds down, checking irrigation, mowing, it’s all about what we do right now.  We do everything we can do to get the best, most productive crop possible.  If something doesn’t grow, we’ve wasted all that time, watering, soil building, weeding, and planting of that tuber.  Watering schedules are almost changed on a daily basis.  How’s the soil?  To dry in this area, turn the irrigation up.  Too moist in that area, turn the irrigation back.

Cut Flower orders in Bulk for Local Weddings and Events:

We will soon be in our cut flower season here at Dahlia Barn!  Need flowers mid-August through mid-October!  Call us and we’ll set you up with the most gorgeous dahlias!  See our ‘Cut Flowers’ page for more information.