Author: Medeek Meadows Dahlia Farm - Page 3 - Medeek Meadows Dahlia Farm

Preserving Dahlias… So sooooo many of us long to see the beautiful dahlia blooms all year long! Dahlias (in Terrace, BC, Canada) can bloom from June + or – until first frost, but bloom time is highly variable and dependent on the variety and your growing location, growing conditions and weather. The earliest I’ve had blooms from any of my dahlias in Terrace has been mid-June. More blooms start coming on in July and they are in their full glory in the months of August and September. Come fall, when the temperatures start to dip, we start watching the weather forecast with keen eyes for any indication of frost that will put a quick end to the dahlias for the season…

So how do we preserve dahlias so that they can be enjoyed all year? They are not an “everlasting” flower like strawflowers and statice which hold their colour and shape really well when dried. Dahlia blooms tend to fade to brown and wither away into a crumpled unappealing fragile ugly mess. But that doesn’t stop folks from trying to dry them! I’m not one of them! But, some folks claim to have success drying them with silica… Its just not my jam, but if its yours, give it a go and let us know how it turns out!

My jam is preserving the beauty of dahlias through photography. During dahlia season, I spend hundreds of hours out in the patch with the camera (and iphone – remarkably powerful) snapping photos of our dahlias and then more time downloading them. Then in the off-season I spend a whole bunch more time gazing at all my beauties, choosing photos that I’ll use for the online dahlia tuber shop, editing them, documenting them, and uploading them to the website in preparation for the dahlia tuber sales over the winter. Most recently I commissioned a very talented artist Emily Gagnon of Three Cedars Studio (FB) to paint the dahlia “Good Day” pictured above and I’m just thrilled with her work! I provided Emily with a photo that I captured of “Good Day” for inspiration. Painted on a 12″ x12″ wood board – Emily used a piece of locally milled Yellow Cedar that was an off-cut/scrap piece from The Barn renovations @ Hidden Acres Farm and Treehouse Resort …We’ll be enjoying the beauty of this dahlia all year round for years to come! Thanks so much Emily!

Dahlia

The Dahlia Dish… February 21, 2023

February 21, 2023 Medeek Meadows Dahlia Farm

Glorious Dahlia Tubers … a tuber is a tuber is a tuber as long as it has a viable eye from which a new plant will grow. If a tuber does not have a viable eye, it’s known as a blind tuber, and although it may grow roots, it will never produce a new plant. Tubers can be tiny (like the size of your thumb or even smaller) or huge (like the size of your forearm). They can be skinny or fat. They can be long or short. They can have some colour pigmentation or not! They can have thin necks or no necks. They can be “ugly” or “beautiful” and still both produce the same gorgeous blooms that are true to the parent dahlia that produced the tubers. They are even edible! Perhaps a good way to use up blind tubers in a nice “zucchini” style loaf made with peeled and grated dahlia tubers?

Growing dahlias from tubers is the most common and arguably the easiest way to grow dahlias. You may find them available as single tubers, or small clumps (pot tubers – commonly found with imported products in nurseries), or even as large clumps (less commonly found for sale, but often friends or family might offer them this way!). A tuber will carry the same genetics as its parent dahlia – unlike seeds from the same plant, where the genetic variation is so high that a plant grown from seed will usually look substantially different than its parents.

Dahlia tubers are extremely sensitive to freezing and the plants are not hardy – they can’t tolerate a frost. So in Canada, tubers are harvested in the fall, stored over the winter in cool & dark conditions, and then planted again in the spring when the risk of frost has passed (usually mid-May in Terrace, BC, Canada). Some folks in the milder climes of Canada have success overwintering dahlias in the grounds – but there is always the risk of losing them to a freeze.

A freshly washed clump of tubers getting ready to be split and divided into individual tubers, then stored away for the winter.

Dahlia

The Dahlia Dish… February 20, 2023

February 20, 2023September 13, 2025 Medeek Meadows Dahlia Farm

Dahlia seedlings – what are they exactly? They are magical. They are exciting. They have both the capacity to surprise and disappoint. They are fun. They are so much more than just a plant started from a tiny seed!

What are they NOT? Dahlia seedlings will not grow true to their parents! They may have similar traits, but rarely look the same as the seed or pollen parent. Seedlings can vary from the seed and pollen parents in colour, form, height, tuber production, seed production, pollen production, foliage colour…

The 2022 growing season saw us grow approximately 500 dahlia plants from seed. Of those 500, we kept less than 80 to overwinter in storage and possibly grow out again in 2023. I spent a ton of my summer time in the seedling patch admiring, observing, recording and documenting the new blooms. And all the while I enjoyed the sweetly intoxicating scent of sweet peas wafting across from their trellis (planting sweet peas next to the dahlia seedling patch was an excellent idea!).

Skeena Darling was the first dahlia seedling that we kept back in 2020 (from 2019 seed)! Her own seeds have produced some stunners including the 2022-065 dahlia pictured above.

Dahlia

The Dahlia Dish…February 20, 2023

February 20, 2023February 20, 2023 Medeek Meadows Dahlia Farm

This was the beginning…where dahlia infatuation and straight up delirium started – thank you Boppa (RIP)! This is my one and only photo of some of the dahlias he grew (taken by a real film loaded camera – way before digital cameras and smart phone cameras were a thing)! It would have been taken in the summer 1995 + or – a few years.

By the look of the brown grass in the field behind the dahlias, it must’ve been a hot dry summer at “Dogwood” farm just outside Victoria on Vancouver Island, BC. The dahlias look like they’re “busting out”, well watered with a healthy dose of “black gold” well-rotted & aged sheep manure applied (ohhhh I’d love to have a big pile of that now!)

I remember once in a while snipping a big bloom to put in a vase in the house for him – but in hindsight I think he actually preferred them to stay in the garden! Good memories of deadheading spent blooms and helping Boppa lift the dahlias in the fall to store them away in the basement. He had great success storing them in whole clumps, in cardboard boxes in an unheated basement. Find more info about digging and storing dahlia tubers on our Dahlia Tips & Care page.