Tag: BC Dahlias

When all your friends are happily sharing their first dahlia blooms…its mid-July already and your own dahlias are “taking their sweet time” to bloom …. Why!?!

Medeek Meadows Dahlia Seedling ID: 2022-049
First Bloom Date: June 28
Started early indoors: Yes
Locale: Terrace, BC, Canada (frost free date approx mid-May, first frost date approx mid-October)

“All good things come to those who wait” may be true! But! If you really want the earliest possible dahlia blooms gracing your garden, there are a few things that you can do. Here are some tips that might help you get earlier blooms next season…

Select dahlia varieties that are known to be earlier bloomers (our website shop includes a filter for “bloom time” that you might find helpful)
Give your dahlias a head start by eyeing up the tubers and potting them up indoors
Pot up (transfer to larger pot as necessary) your early indoor starts and transfer them to an outside greenhouse when temperature permits
Transfer those greenhouse plants to the outdoor garden after your frost free date
Plant your earliest varieties first and put them in the prime location of your garden – where they get all the sun and all your attention!
Ensure your dahlias are well fed from the start. Doing a soil test is helpful for both the novice and experienced gardeners. Fertilizers can be expensive – relatively inexpensive home soil test kits can help you determine exactly what nutrients you need to target. Garden soil is often nitrogen poor, which leads to lack of vigour and susceptibility to disease and slow growth. Be careful with adding too much nitrogen – you want a good balance – follow recommendations for application from your soil test!
Avoid crowding your dahlias such that they get outcompeted by their neighbours which may set them back.
Elliminate bugs and slugs that will set your dahlias back and in turn delay blooming.

You don’t NEED to do any of the above! Aside from selecting “early varieties”, the rest all take extra time, effort, and resources. If you prefer the “keep it simple and easy” type of gardening, its just fine to plant your tubers out directly into the garden near your frost free date and let them do their thing. Depending on your location in Canada, your first blooms will start appearing anywhere from June (early varieties in warm locales) thru September (late varieties in colder climates). In Terrace BC, dahlias really start putting on their show in late July. They are a favourite flower for so many folks for so many reasons and in particular because once they start blooming, they bloom continuously until the first frost (remember to dead head plants to keep them blooming).

Medeek Meadows Dahlia Seedling ID: 2022-056
First Bloom Date: July 11
Started early indoors: Yes
Locale: Terrace, BC, Canada (frost free date approx mid-May, first frost date approx mid-October)

…until next time, we’ll be out in the garden paying special attention to disbudding for longer stems and better blooms…enjoy the ride…take time to smell the roses…Grow Beautiful Dahlias!

Dahlia

The Dahlia Dish … April 8th, 2023

April 8, 2023April 8, 2023 Medeek Meadows Dahlia Farm

When do you plant your dahlias outside? … or maybe the more common question is – how early can I plant my dahlias?! A good question! The answer(s) depend mostly on where you live and when you expect your last frost. An easy rule of thumb to remember is to plant your dahlia tubers when the lilacs start blooming.

If your tubers are in cold storage, take them out to warm up and eye up just a couple weeks before your frost free date. This is not absolutely necessary, but if you have any “blind tubers” in your bins, then it’ll save you planting any duds.

If you are eager to get your beauties started earlier than your frost free date (perhaps you live in a really cold climate with a short growing season), you’ll need grow lights, grow room with lots of space, and a heated greenhouse would be excellent. If you have all these resources, then you can get started almost anytime. It is a fair bit of work, but its not work if you love it right?!

What if I plant my dahlia tubers out in the garden before my frost free date? If you’re a risk taker or maybe you like to push the boundaries or maybe there is another reason that you’d want to plant your dahlia tubers outside before your last frost free date (maybe you’ll be away during that peak planting period which is mid-May for us in Terrace). I have planted my dahlia tubers out in the garden in mid-April in Terrace, once because I was going to be away from the end of April until the first week of June – I came home to lovely dahlia plants happily growing. Another time I had all my dahlias started early and they had lovely green shoots with beautiful sets of leaves. I hardened them off outside for a few days and then planted them out – the very next morning we had our last frost of the year and as soon as the frost melted all my beautiful dahlia plants wilted from the nip of frost. Had I covered them with frost cloth, they may have been protected enough and carried on without any damage.

If you must plant your dahlias outside in the garden before your frost free date, here are a few things to consider.

If the frost nips your dahlias new growth, all is not lost. If the tuber is in good shape it will push up new shoots. The frost kill will likely set back your dahlia’s growth by a couple weeks.
If you plant dahlia tubers out early, know that they won’t do much growing until it warms up. Its kind of like putting them in cold storage out in the field – but where they are potentially subjected to additional abject conditions like risk of bugs/pests, rainy weather (a lot of rain and poor drainage can lead to rotting of tubers), frosts (kills off new growth and sets back new growth by a few weeks if your tuber doesn’t rot)

So what do we do at Medeek Meadows? We wait for the lilacs to bloom – mostly! We get our dahlias eyed up ahead of time by moving them out of cold storage as much as a month before our frost free date. Some varieties take longer than others to eye up. We check the weather, and look for signs of frost in the forecast – those mornings after a brilliant sunny day with clear skies at night are the ones to watch out for. Most of our dahlias are field grown. On our mission to get earlier blooms, we look for varieties that are earlier bloomers rather than getting them started early. Dahlias typically bloom from late June until frost. At Medeek Meadows Dahlia Farm in Terrace BC, we don’t expect or rely on June blooms. We usually start seeing dahlia blooms in our bouquets by mid-July. This is always weather dependent – and if we get a cool, wet summer our hopes for July blooms diminish… Dahlias are usually “full-on” in August and September. Dahlias like summers to be the same way we do – moderate warm temperatures, not too hot and not too cold with lots of sunshine.

Dahlia

The Dahlia Dish… February 26, 2023

February 26, 2023September 13, 2025 Medeek Meadows Dahlia Farm

Dahlia 040 NOID Rocco mislabled from — Dahlia 040 NOID

NOID? What the heck is a Dahlia NOID? … In short, a NOID is a Dahlia who is well loved, grown and nurtured from year to year, but whose name has been lost, forgotten or never known. A NOID is never a Dahlia destined for the compost heap – NOID is a term only used for dahlias that we love and keep. NOID is simply a short reference to “NO IDentification”.

We give our NOIDs a number and a short description that helps us remember which bloom we’re working with during different times of the year when there are no blooms to see (like this time of year when we’re checking our tuber inventories in winter storage). The Dahlia pictured above is known to us only as “040 MM NOID Rocco mislabeled from source”. We’ve hung on to her because we love her qualities.

040 MM NOID is a beautiful dahlia that we see a lot of value in keeping. We acquired her by mistake when we ordered a dahlia named “Rocco” from a grower who sent us a tuber that was not actually “Rocco” but something else entirely… a happy accident 🙂 She’s in the category of very dark red, almost black dahlias – a very nice colour that works with blush pink bouquets – the light in the photo above shows the red in her bloom, but in real life, the bloom looks much darker (see photo below). Beautiful dark stems – an excellent cut flower for bouquets. A good bloomer and often an earlier bloomer for us.

We use these colour cards from the American Dahlia Society to help us narrow down the colour of Dahlia blooms… its super handy and also very interesting to see the blooms next to the cards. Sometimes its hard to get a good match because the colour variations are almost limitless!

“Dahlia 035 MM NOID – Boppa’s Tutie Fruity” is another favourite NOID. Definitely of sentimental value because it’s an oldie from the farm – my Nana and Boppa’s old Dogwood farm on Vancouver Island. But we love it because its got that gorgeous “flare” of yellow and red. Its a stunner in the garden and also is blessed with great stems for bouquets.

“Fire Magic” originally came to us as a gift from my sister Jacklin. But! She was given the name “Coral Nancy” because they didn’t know the real name and so she became known as “Coral” for her bloom’s beautiful coral colouring + “Nancy” for the woman who gave a friend a tuber awhile back… So for a few years we called this one “Dahlia 009 NOID Coral Nancy” until one summer we accidently stumbled across her real name! We ordered a dahlia called “Fire Magic” which turned out to be exactly the same bloom & tuber production as ol’ Coral Nancy… a little confusion in the garden…and then voila! That’s how we solved the mystery of “009 NOID” (an accurate and consistent naming and labelling system helped too!).

We try to solve all the mysteries! But sometimes it takes years. A search on the internet sometimes turns up an exact match but not always. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of dahlias and some are never named (like those for sale in mixed bags of tubers from big box stores and garden nurseries with packaging names like “Ball mix” or “Cactus mix” or “Waterlily mix” or “Decorative mix” or “Dinnerplate mix” or “Cut flower mix” etc. which are usually imported from large growers overseas). In order to make a match, you need to compare the bloom colour, form, and size. You also need to compare the plant’s growth habit and the size, shape, colour and style of tuber production. All these qualities can differ and provide clues to discover the real name of the well loved NOIDs.

More of our beautiful NOIDs!
If you think you know the real name – we’d LOVE to hear from you!

Dahlia 016 MM NOID Meg’s fav orange (possibly Glorie Van Noordwijk)
Dahlia 021 MM NOID Red Velvet
Dahlia 109 MM NOID Red/Yellow Cactus
Dahlia 139 MM NOID Dark Maroon Ball
Dahlia 142 MM NOID JJ’s fav purple (gorgeous bright pinky magenta bloom on dramatic dark leaved plant) *Update 2024 we discovered the name is Engelhardt’s Matador*
Dahlia 012 MM NOID JJ Bright Scarlet Red
Dahlia 113 MM NOID White Waterlily

Recipes

The Dahlia Dish… February 24, 2023

February 24, 2023 Medeek Meadows Dahlia Farm

Sooooo I totally agree, alfalfa sprouts have nothing to do with dahlias! But given that we all have other interests, I thought I’d share one of mine 🙂 … growing our own delicious sprouts for salads and sandwiches! Sprouts are dead easy to grow and and a really affordable way to put healthy food on the table ALL YEAR long!

How long does it take? About 6 days. How much does it cost? Pennies! Can the kids grow them? Yes! Why have you never tried it? I don’t know!

What do you need? While there are probably lots of “sprouting” tools you can spend a ton of money on, you might have everything you need already, and if not, I’ll tell you where I found some of the essentials for a good price (check out Mumms https://sprouting.com/ … currently offering free shipping on orders of $40 CAD or more, by far THE BEST prices for sprouting seeds and sprouting lids that I’ve found).

1 L wide mouth mason jar (I like to have 3 on the go for a constant supply of fresh sprouts)
Sprouting screen/lid
measuring spoons (tablespoon)
small mixing bowl (use as a stand to drain your jar upside down)
fresh cool water
sprouting seeds (alfalfa is a great one to start with for a mild well-loved flavour. I also really like sprouting mustard seeds to add a kick of heat and subtle mustard flavour to sandwhiches… a blend of both is excellent too)

How do I grow sprouts?

Day 1

Add 2 Tablespoons of alfalfa sprouting seeds to a 1L mason jar
Add cool water (about 1 cup – enough to cover the seeds liberally) to the jar
Let the seeds soak for about 6-8 hours or overnight

Day 2

Drain the water from the jar thru the screen and turn jar upside down so that all the residual water drains out (I place the jar upside down on an angle in a mixing bowl)… leave on your counter for the sprouts to germinate at room temperature. Avoid placing them in front of a hot window (North facing window is perfect).

Day 3-6

Morning and/or night fill the jar with water and rinse (twice a day is best (once per day is ok)
(I’ll start another jar of sprouts on day 3 so that we have a continuous supply – but you might like to have more going if you have a big family or less if they are just for yourself… there’s just two of us, so adjust for your own needs)

Day 6. + or –

Rinse and drain the sprouts one last time and eat fresh or refrigerate (drier sprouts store better, so be sure to drain them well).
Favourite way to eat them is with hummus on sourdough with fresh slices of cucumber and tomato… YUM!

3 Jars on the go! The first jar on the far left is on day 3 (I just have it set upside down in a small mixing bowl so that all residual water from daily rinsing drains out). The middle jar has just been started – soaking the sprouting seeds for about 6 hours or so. The third jar on the far right just has 2 tablespoons of seeds added – just ready for adding water to start the germination in about 3 days to keep the sprout train rolling…