Pro Tips To Harvest Dahlias
A fresh harvest of dahlias ready for bouquets
Dahlias are the absolute star in the field right now. We’re cutting buckets of them every three days and we ooooh and ahhhh over them every time.
If you’re growing dahlias in your own cutting garden, here are some tips on picking them like a pro for longer vase life, better blooms and, stronger plants for the rest of the season.
The number one mistake most people make when cutting dahlias is snipping way too short in order to preserve the buds forming below the open flower. Even though that feels right, you’ll get better results if you get past your fear of losing those blooms and cut much deeper into the plant.
There are 2 very good reasons to cut deep:
if you cut only up to the next layer of blooms below the flower you want, you will have a sad-stubby stem that is too short to work into your arrangements. You can always cut the stem shorter later but you can’t make it longer. Set yourself up for design success with a longer stem.
Think of cutting dahlias as pruning the plant. More blooms will branch out from the place you cut encouraging vigorous growth from the stable part of the plant. But, if you cut high on the stem, you’ll get big top-heavy flowers that are likely to fall over, break and damage your plant. By cutting low, you are encouraging vigorous growth from the stable part of the plant.
Here is Tyler cutting a stem a good 18” long, lower on the plant. As a guide: I try to cut the length of my forearm.
He went right past several new bud, and that is just fine. The plant will send more up from the place where he cut in no time. Seriously, dahlias are very productive and if you keep cutting, they will keep coming.
Dahlias have little nodes along their stems where the leaves branch out. You’ll want to cut right at the top of one because that is where the plant will form new flowers. If you look closely, you can see tiny new shoots forming at the leaf node right below the snips.
You can already see tiny new shoots starting in the sectional node right beneath the snips. Tyler is cutting at a 45 degree angle to maximize the open surface area of the stem to take up more water and last longer
Once you’ve harvested your stems, snip off any branching buds. You can set them aside and use them in your designs. You can sometimes leave one on for interest, but your bloom will last longer if you remove anything excess. If the buds are much taller than the flower, I always trim them off.
In the interest of longer vase life, you should strip off the foliage too. Dahlias are divas that don’t last as long as many other flowers. We like to give them every chance by making sure the plant only has the flower itself to support with no extra water going to leaves or branching stems. You can always add foliage from something else to your arrangement or just mass them all together so your arrangement is just over the top flowers.
I typically strip foliage right in the field and let that organic matter make its way back into the soil. You can put it on your compost pile if that works better for you.
Prep your stems by disbudding and stripping foliage for longer vase life. If buds are on long enough stems, you can add them to your arrangement separately
Dahlia season is painfully short here on the Palouse. They really don’t come on seriously until the end of August. They are at their best in September, and that is the month when we typically get a frost.
I don’t care if the season is brief. I love these fabulous flowers. I wait all year for them and savor every bloom. I hope you are doing the same with the divas in your own garden.
