06/20/2026
When we set out to grow “more dahlias” several years ago never did I believe that we’d grow just over 2,700! Truthfully, I can’t even imagine what it is going to look like when this new dedicated dahlia bed is in bloom!
Originally, I thought we put perennials in this space. However, as the list of dahlias I wanted to grow continued to expand we knew this space would be needed. We also wanted to be able to add more dahlias into our summer bundles along with adding them into our dahlia only wraps, so more dahlias planted was the trick! We nearly doubled what we grew last season!
To create this space, we put our silage tarp over the area for about 3 months and then we dumped out the horse/goat stalls into this space and let it sit all winter, before tilling in the partially composted manure/bedding. Then we laid landscape fabric in all the walk ways and made rows for planting. To be totally honest this wasn’t the original vision, but I’m so glad with how came together and turned out!
When we planted the “extra” tubers back here it was a gamble, either they’d thrive or they wouldn’t grow well.
Safe to say the gamble paid off and they are growing absolutely beautifully! The best thing about this planting space currently is that the dahlia rows themselves are not covered with landscape fabric, which saved us a lot of time in planting and we are excited to see how they grow compared to the ones we have in landscape fabric. We are using chopped straw as much and w**d suppression. But we are also staying on top of the w**ding and using a hand scraping hoe to get the w**ds when they are small with a quick 30ish minute w**d every week! Dahlias are heavy feeders so hopefully the extra composted manure is just what they ordered to grow and thrive in this location!
This space is closer to our back woods and does have deer and rabbit grazing pressure, so we will see how much or little they bother them. We have had some nibbling but now that the twine is up, they should bother them less, but we shall see!
Let me know if you have any questions on how we created this bed!
Pretty excited for Sweet Es dahlia season!
