Hello, dahlia! Make the most of these beautiful blossoms

ROYAL CITY — Gardeners and plant lovers with dahlias in their yard or garden are inevitably enjoying the views of beautiful blooms this time of season.

Kyle Gray-Eilers of Royal City specializes in growing dahlia tubers, selling the starts and cut flowers to people as they’re ready throughout the growing season. Gray-Eilers said dahlias are a mid-summer to early fall flower and are in their prime time for producing flowers.

“At this point, probably about 85% of the tubers are all blooming flowers,” Gray-Eilers said.

She said this is the time of year when all the work throughout the summer pays off, with flowers produced every day. Gray-Eilers said dahlias are “cut and come again” flowers that will essentially produce more, the more they’re harvested. Dahlias, she said, are great attractors for pollinators, too, with bees’ constantly circling around her flowers.

She said she recommends cutting the stem of the flowers when harvesting blooms to help encourage the plant to send off longer shoots the next time.

“Go ahead and cut the stem very deep near the base of the plant; it will encourage more flowers to come and those flowers will have longer stems, which is ideal for cutting flowers for bouquets,” Gray-Eilers said.

Gray-Eilers said she planted her tubers around the beginning of May and started cutting blooms around the end of July. She said something she recommends is “pinching” the plants about six weeks after planting, trimming around the middle of the plant to help encourage stems that come back to grow out, not up.

She said she has about 48 varieties this year, with the ball-type dahlias her favorite for their longer vase life compared to some of the bigger varieties. A Sebastian ball-variety dahlia has been one of her favorites this year and the number one producer.

Gray-Eilers said she uses a drip-method irrigation system, with water running from one end of her garden to the bottom with some help from gravity. She said she typically waters her flowers about four hours a day in the evening and morning. About every 7-10 days, she said she fertilizes her garden rows with an organic mix.

During the incessant heat wave in June, she said she lost about 20% of her plants. Gray-Eilers said she kept her irrigation system going pretty much non-stop during that time, but unfortunately watered the weeds, too.

“There were places where the growth was stunted because the weeds were so bad, they (flowers) weren’t getting the sunlight they needed and it was too hot to have people out weeding,” Gray-Eilers said.

She said there are shorter and taller varieties of dahlias. For taller plants, she said she recommends staking them this time of year to help protect the plants from the Basin winds. She said she will stake with twine running down the sides of the rows to help corral and support flowers. Some gardeners will stake all of their dahlia plants, but she said she’s found she can get away without staking some of the smaller plants.

As flowers without a long vase life, Gray-Eilers said dahlias can seem like a lot of work. To help extend that, she recommends placing the flowers into water immediately after they’re cut. Smushing down the stem at the base before placing it in the vase can help the flower absorb water.

She recommends changing the water every day and trimming the stems of flowers in the process to get the longest vase life possible from dahlias. Once the first frost comes, she said the tubers will be harvested and separated so they can be sold to other gardeners. Those she keeps are stored in a cold room, and she monitors the temperature and humidity to ensure the tubers don’t have any rot.