gardening
There’s something mysterious about burying a lumpy, misshapen tuber and then seeing it become a beautiful plant topped with abundant clusters of dazzling f lowers, all in a few short months. That tuber in question is surely a dahlia. The best part: The tubers give a repeat performance the next year and the next and the next. All you have to do is provide friable soil with plenty of compost, ample but not excessive amounts of water and plenty of sunshine (a little afternoon shade is also nice), then sit back and wait. The American Dahlia Society recommends planting dahlia tubers at the same time you’d plant tomatoes. Be patient. Depending on the variety, dahlia tubers can take as long as a couple of months to get growing. They will erupt from the soil, sending up long stems clothed with bright-green foliage. Snails and slugs love the new foliage. And the f lowers have so many different sizes and shapes. There are dahlias shaped like tight little pompoms, while others resemble stars or cactus f lowers. Most bloom in August and continue blooming well into fall when summer perennials are fading and dying. In fact, September and October can be prime dahlia bloom time in much of California. Keep cutting flowers for a longer display. Fall-blooming dahlias can give the always-popular chrysanthemum a run for its money. In all but the coldest areas of California, you can leave the tubers in the ground. Otherwise, they need to be dug up and stored in a cardboard or wooden box or a paper bag. Loosely cover them with peat moss or vermiculite and leave them in a cool, dark area until spring. If that seems like too much work, leave them in the ground and let Mother Nature decide what happens. If they don’t come back up, then you can look upon them as annuals and simply buy more tubers each year. Colorful flowers bloom late summer through fall, year after year Dazzling dahlias
Story by Pat Rubin
Pat Rubin cbmagazine@californiabountiful.com
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March/April 2022
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