As spring rolls around, we are back at our gardening and that includes planting dahlia tubers. Some of ours got a little excited in storage this year as you can see! If you bought tubers from us or elsewhere, here are some tips on planting.
When to plant:
After your last frost or up to 2-3 weeks before your last frost. The tubers will take a few weeks to pop up out of the ground and you don’t want the new growth to get damaged by frost. If it does happen to get damaged by frost, don’t worry! The tuber will send up new shoots!
How deep to plant:
The recommended guidance is 4-6 inches below the surface. We have heavy clay soil so sometimes ours are a bit more shallow and they still work out.
How to plant:
Dig a whole (or make a trench with a hoe if planting large quantities like us). I like to add some bone meal in my hole or trench to give them a boost. Sometimes I forget so not a critical step. Plant the tuber laying on its side with the eye pointing upward.
Sometime the eye will have growth pre sprouting out of it and other times it will not. Either way is fine! If the sprout breaks off of the eye, NO WORRIES AT ALL! The tuber will actually send out a couple of new sprouts. If the sprout is too long as shown in our first picture, I will pop it off before planting. If it is small enough to be buried in the ground, I will leave it on (as shown below)
Plant spacing:
Space these tubers 12-18 inches apart.
When to water:
The recommended advice by many is to not water your tubers until they pop out of the ground. If you live in a very wet place that gets lots of rain, I would follow that advice. We however live in a high desert that gets virtually no spring rains, so I do water my tubers in when I plant them and then once a week until they come up. I would only advise this if you get little to no spring rain as we do.
After dahlias have popped out of the ground, water them consistently.
Pinch to get more blooms:
When the plant is about a foot tall and has 3 to 4 sets of true leaves, cut the main stem down to about half, or to where you can leave 2 sets of leaves on the plant. This encourages the plant to send up more shoots and you will get more blooms! You will be delayed by a couple of weeks, but it will be worth it! Trust me!
I don’t have pictures of this when it comes to dahlias, but below is a video on pinching cosmos, zinnias, and snapdragons and it is exactly the same for dahlias.
Staking:
Dahlias will get very tall and prone to blow over in windy areas. If you just have a few dahlia plants, you can stake with individual stakes or tomato cages. If you have many in a row you can use horizontal plant netting (hortonova) or a corralling method with stakes and twine.
Comment or shoot us an email if you have any questions! Happy gardening!