Growing Dahlias in New Zealand
A Quick Disclaimer
I decided to grow dahlias as a bit of therapy. There wasn't (and still isn't) any commercial angle to my "garden" and my approach is very laissez faire.
I put my plants into a few rows of topsoil in the middle of a paddock, and aside from a few hundred dollars spent on tubers (and a lot of time outside in the dark with a head torch) I have nothing to lose.
This is not supposed to be a best practice "how to" guide, more of a "how I did it" chat.
Different Types of Dahlia
Before you start trawling the entire internet looking for tubers to buy, it helps to have any idea of the type of dahlia you are looking to buy.
Dahlia come in different heights as well as different flower styles. Dahlias with the kind of height you need for cut flowers have different names depending on where you're from, and I'm not a horticulturalist or a botanist so I might be misinformed, but I'll give it a nudge.
Getting Started With Dahlias
There are three ways to grow dahlia; from seeds, from tubers, from cuttings. Growing dahlia from seeds is the most cost effective way, but each seed is a brand new variety of flower. Growing from a tuber or a cutting guarantees you are getting the same flower as the parent plant.
Planting Your Dahlias
The easiest and most cost effective way of having as many plants as possible from a single tuber is to plant your tubers early in a small pot with a mix of potting mix and compost. You can find pots in the pot recycling bin at your local Mitre 10 or Bunnings.
Lessons Learned
For me, the 2023/24 dahlia growing season was about getting out of my comfort zone, trying something completely new and learning as I went.
I tried not to do too much looking over the (literal and figurative) fence and instead focused on learning as I went.
I needed the process to be low stress (as I was recovering from burnout) and to be more about enjoying the process.
Some Useful Resources
While I might (definitely) not be the best example of how to do things right there are some good places you can go to read info or ask questions of people who actually know what they are doing.
