Planting out my dahlias and other things

Snapdragons

Hello my fellow garden enthusiasts, how are you? I’ve been making the most of the sunshine and planting out the rest of my seedlings and this week, Lilly and I started planting out the dahlias. I love the look on her face!

that expression says it all. Wonder and amazement at how tubers turn into leafy plants that then bloom into incredibly beautiful flowers- some the size of dinner plates.

Last year you may recall I was careless with my dahlias and they didn’t survive the winter, so it was a rather costly start to the year replacing them. I managed to keep a couple of Penhill Watermelon and Night Silence, but I did have to buy new Cafe au lait and Wine Eyed Jill. Anyway, they will all catch up soon and be blooming late summer. I’m relieved we haven’t got the slug problem we had last year, they’ve been in the ground a few nights now and it all looks good- no sign of any leaf munching.

I’ve got 12 plants in a bed that’s 2×2 meters. I’ll stake the edges and in between to create a grid frame to support them. This will give me plenty of blooms for the house, flower mornings and for bouquets. It’s surprising how much you can get off a relatively small collection of plants so long as you feed them well- dahlias are very hungry! Feed them weekly to get the best from them. I’ll be taking a few cuttings too so I can increase my stock and I’ll have these in pots up by the house. I have a (paid) tutorial in my archives on how to do this when you’ve already planted the plant.

You can see the post here- how to take dahlia cuttings

My flowers arrangement from the garden also start again next week!

On other news I’ve been redecorating my living room and I thought I’d share a few snaps with you before I go.

Bringing in calm with rustic textures and chalky walls- and breathe, time for a cup of tea I think. Happy gardening.