Planting Dahlias

[MadSprocker]

Has anyone started planting theirs yet? I can't see any news of frosts on the horizon.

Yep, mine have been in pots for a few weeks now in the greenhouse! If you're planting them outside, you should be fine now, though give em a bit of a mulch just in case we're really unlucky!

I have had my dahlias hardening off in pots for a week or more now. No problems, apart from a few nibbles from slugs.... I will say no more!

I live in SE & planted mine out a couple of weeks ago - I now realise it was a risky strategy - I overheard an assistant at the local garden centre telling a customer 'it's too early for dahlias'. I've been lucky this year, but might not be, another year!

Mine are out in pots now and about a foot tall. Brought them on in the greenhouse and while I'm in the North, they are in a sheltered back garden.

After considerable time, I decided that if I dig them up in autumn, dry them off, pack in peat, store in a dry place until spring, etc, a few of them might die.

Whereas if I cut the tops off and leave them in a the ground all winter, a few of them might die.

The ones in the ground mostly throw up lots of shoots and have big roots, so if necessary I can dig one up and divide it to fill gaps.

Less work and same results.

I must admit, my allotment plot neighbours have a bed of dahlias at the end of their plot. They just cut them down, and forget about them over winter and they have come back up for 3 years on the trot so far . I am in East Yorkshire, so you may have point there PigletJohn

Maybe hardiness varies a bit from dahlia to dahlia - there was that bloke on GW recently who grew crap tons of the things and I am sure he said something to that effect?? (But I may be misremembering). Also, I shrewdly suspect, like a lot of these things, that rot caused by waterlogging in a heavy soil can do as much damage as cold!

I've been hardening mine off for a few days.
I need to transplant them- is it okay to put them into the ground now, do you think?
Or better to out into larger pots, then ground later?
First time we've done dahlias.
Also- do you have to do a pinching out of leaves thing? And if so, how would I do that please?

Never done pinching out leaves with dahlias myself, just kept cutting the flowers.

Thanks

I have grown most of my dahlias from seed, and certainly when they are little, they must need pinching out, to stop them being tall & spindly. If they are more established & putting up loads of shoots, they may not need it.

This year I have pinched most of mine out as an experiment - never done it before. Electro you just pinch off the growing tip, as close as possible to the 2 leaves on each side of it, and after a short time (a week at most) 2 new shoots come through to replace the 1.

Am heartened by this post. I'd taken a risk and left mine in last year - mainly because there was one left in the front garden the previous year that I'd forgotten about, and it grew amazingly the following season.

But, of the 8 or so I'd left in the back garden, only 2 have returned so far this year. Having read this, I'm really hoping that the rest are just about to break the surface!

We leave ours in the ground, just cut down in winter & they come back. Are in front garden, flowered from June through to Dec last year! Much admired by neighbours & passersby. Only lost a couple over the years and that was more because of slugs, we think, as they ate the growing shoots. Some from tubers originally, others grown from seed.
But we are in London.

I'm generally rubbish with gardening (DH calls me the Harold Shipman of the gardening world!!!).

When you say you cut them down for winter, how far do you cut them down? I would love to have a colourful garden but at the moment my garden is full of evergreens that I can't kill!

I leave a few inches of stem out of the ground as a marker of where they are, and mulch over for the winter. I think heavy wet soil is more likely to rot them.
Mine are in a bed with tulip bulbs, and shoot up before the tulips have withered.

Gardeners' World last week suggested leaving dahlias in the ground!

Thank you searabbit, I shall examine them this evening for single shoots.

I'm in the southwest and mine have been outside in a pot for a good four weeks now and they're doing quite well. A bit slow to start though!

I dig up mine for winter because of slugs eating the new shoots if I leave in.

They do seem to come up at different rates: I left Last year's seed-grown plants in pots overwinter and 4 hadn't come through by 2 weeks ago - so I checked the tubers and they all had tiny shoots - 3 now have leaves at least 4" high but one (my favourite) has yet to break the surface.

I don't lift mine, west coast of Scotland. No casualties yet. Mine are about 8 inches so far.

I left mine in the ground as the roots were massive and wouldn't have fit in the pots again, but none of them have grown back!

Silver I get big pots for free from our local Squires garden centre - they have a recycling point, and I believe all Squires have these.

Am in the South East and just cut down plants and leave them over winter.
They come back lots of green foliage pushing up now.