Dahlia Season
When I built my garden, I had a vision of dahlias in full bloom, rows of colorful flowers and interesting shapes everywhere you look. My dahlias started blooming in early August and are just now, in the very beginning of September, about to hit full bloom.
There is hardly a time of year when I am not thinking about dahlias - I am either tending to them in the garden, photographing them, digging, dividing, starting, or checking on tubers, planning my plantings, and scouring dahlia sales for the top varieties on my wishlist for the season.
I am still learning how to gauge availability for wholesale, as timing of harvest-ready blooms is a challenge to predict a week in advance, but I am getting the hang of it. Starting small, under-estimating and then scaling as I find a rhythm to it. So far one of the local florists that shops with the Central Oregon Flower Collective is very open to my grower’s bunch offering, knowing that my plan is to cut what’s fresh and that pretty much everything they’ll receive will be exceptionally beautiful.
This season I’ve taken note of a few things I’ll do differently next season. I’ll likely wake them sooner to get an even earlier jumpstart on growth which will hopefully mean earlier blooms, and I may adjust my planting layout a little bit - there is a corner of the garden that is a little slower to bloom and I think one reason might be the amount of direct sunlight it gets.
A big new exciting development is that I’m planning to sell some tubers online in Spring 2025! As I am truly a little flower farm, I’ll have limited quantities, so I hope to be able to offer them to a subscriber list first, before opening the sale up to the general public. I have my nursery license through the Oregon Department of Agriculture which is a must for selling tubers, so I’ll be working to have my inspection and sign-off prior to the sale. If you’re interested in being the first to know about my dahlia tuber sale, please sign up for my newsletter!
Here are a few of my favorite dahlia photos from this summer, so far:
