Hiya! I’m Kate, and I’ve been a very long time lurker and figured I’d finally introduce myself. I’m in central Iowa, near Des Moines, and there’s not a lot to do here for flower shows or anything. I’ve been flower and vegetable gardening for many years, but only been growing dahlias for about four. Growing dahlias has really upped my gardening game, haha. But I still have a lot to figure out still, and honestly -despite my massive dahlia patches- I just grow for myself so if things in the dahlia row get a little messy it’s no big deal. Last year I really improved my soil and my netting/staking, and those two things have helped phenomenally. This year I finally added some “irrigation” (just sprinkler hoses) which Mother Nature saw and decided to rain perfectly on schedule for most of the summer.
I try to disbud, and often pick flowers too late, and struggle with “when in doubt throw it out” (but I paid $18 for that!!!)
but my biggest struggle is probably the decline in flower size that I get after the first flush of blooms. If anyone has any ideas I’d appreciate them! My soil test came back “very high” in P and K, so I’ve been hesitant to add any sort of bloom booster. I actually went overboard on nitrogen this spring, with two heavy doses of 30-0-3 lawn food. With a solid month before our first frost I’m not sure if adding more nitrogen would be detrimental?
I’ll add a link to a dahlia garden tour I just posted to YouTube. The upload really decreased the color saturation, so keep that in mind. dahlia garden
