Grow some equity, plant a dahlia

It’s spring and since some surmise we’re in a recession, this historical combination makes it the perfect time to consider growing a garden. Including vegetables in the mix for sustenance seems practical, but for aesthetic reasons flowers, especially dahlias, are essential. My thought this season is that instead of buying a house, plant a dahlia tuber. Regularly watered, they’re virtually risk-free and, in less than a year, build easy equity consisting of cut flowers and typically, from year to year, a 75% increase in tubers.

Alaska’s plants, with our short summers, often follow the live fast and die young motto, so if they’re not given some extra love inside prior to the official Memorial Day start of the season, flowering can begin late. This is especially true of dahlias. Once started, our long days of continual sunlight create amazing conditions, where sometimes a plant’s growth in one day can visibly be measured on a yardstick. With that in mind, my green-thumbed mother called the other day and reminded me that it’s time to pull my tubers out of the basement, as April 1st is a good deadline for planting dahlias inside.

Dahlias are very economical. At the end of the season they leave a tuber that carries all of the nutrients for next year’s plant, and this can be divided into three or four more plants. Below is a video of a woman from Scotland planting dahlia tubers. She pronounces the word dahlia like dale-ya. Americans typically pronounce the word dal-ya. Dal like Hal. Here she shows just how easy it is to plant a tuber:

After I plant my tubers, I set each one in a sunny window and after a few weeks they sprout and reveal the beginnings of a plant stalk. In early June, I move them outside into a full sun location and transplant them into larger pots, where they’ll grow up to four feet tall, producing many brightly-colored flowers. The dinner plate dahlia varieties are my favorites, with blossoms the size of their namesake. There are also decorative dahlias, great for cut bouquets; cactus dahlias, with petals that curl on the ends resembling cacti; and smaller varieties used for bordering flower beds. Since mature dinner plate dahlias in Fairbanks usually cost around $30 each, I typically treat myself to one greenhouse grown plant per year. Last year The Plant Kingdom’s dahlias were the healthiest in town, and I recently bought a bag of dinner plate tubers at Lowe’s for $5.98.

At the end of the season, after a frost that is hard enough to turn the lower stalk of the plant a dark black brown, I cut off the top of the dahlia plant, about two inches from the bottom of the plant’s stalks, and carefully dig out the dahlia tuber that has been expanding beneath the soil during the summer. The tubers are typically packed densely with soil, so I hose them off, let them sit for a few days to dry out, before dividing. At this time I also attach with string or wire to each tuber a piece of sturdy paper with the color and variety name, for the next season. Then I plop them all in a large tote of cat litter. The cat litter helps them to stay dry and keeps them from mildewing during the winter. They sit in a dark, cool yet above-freezing place until March, when each tuber is planted in its own pot and the cycle of begins all over again.

It’s March 28th. Have you planted a dahlia yet?

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