May was dahlia planting time. Bed prep, moving 40 crates out of the loft, and finally, the planting. It marks the real start of the flower season for us when everything just goes bonkers.

Pre-sprouting versus direct planting

Dahlia tubers cost around £3 to £5 so they warrant a little mollycoddling. I used to pre-sprout nearly all our dahlias indoors in April. That meant potting them up and giving over most of the dining room until they sprouted. This was fine when there were 40, a struggle when there were 100, and impossible now there’s around 300.

And honestly? Last year, the ones I think the ones I planted straight into the ground caught up with the pre-sprouted ones pretty quickly.

So this year, I only pre-sprouted about 50. I kept them outside with a frost cloth on standby, and only needed to cover them a couple of times in May during frosty nights. No casualties.

The rest went straight into the ground on 10 May.

Overwintering and crossing fingers

Carrying dahlias through winter is always a gamble. Leave them in and risk them rotting in the wet. You also miss the chance to spot disease that may spread to other plants.

Dig them up, it’s a lot of work, and they can dry and shrivel to nothing. It’s always a tense moment pulling back the cloth from a stored crates to take a look, but this year, they all looked good - plump and mould-free.

Preparing the beds

The dahlias go into field 2 — which, if I’m honest, we hadn’t touched since last season. That was partly down to time, partly because letting plants die back naturally is better for the soil and wildlife, and partly down to my laziness.

This meant, this year we had to:

Clear and bundle up the pea netting (we reuse plastic wherever we can)
Pull out and compost all the dead plants
Remove the weed-suppressing cloth and the hundreds of staples holding it down
Lift and roll the irrigation tape — 15 x 25-metre lengths, carefully coiled to avoid tangles, checking as we go for leaks or nibbles

Improving the soil

The beds we planted into last year looked okay — rich and crumbly from previous compost. But we rotate our flower crops and the new areas were dry, sandy, and chalky.

We brought in a trailer-load of compost. It’s essential, but not cheap — several hundred pounds’ worth, which I immediately convert in my head to “how many bouquets before I break even?” The answer is a lot! We’re expanding our homemade compost setup, but we’re not there yet.

We also added a scattering of fish, blood and bone to boost nutrients.

Then it all goes back again.

Lay the weed-suppressing cloth and bang in hundreds of staples to hold it down
Roll out and connect the irrigation tape then test for leaks (there are always some).

I should have added the pea netting support, but ran out of time before heading away for a break. Now I’m back the dahlias are already too big for it so I’ll have to stake them individually. Exactly what happened last year!

Finally, planting

We try to keep each variety together, but it’s never perfect - labels fall off, and tubers look suspiciously alike.

The stored tubers, many already sprouting in the loft, go straight into the soil. I dig a shallow crater and build a little mound of compost over the top — I think it helps with airflow and it’s a lot quicker than digging 300 holes.

The pre-sprouted ones go in too. Even if there’s no sign of green growth, they’re often full of healthy roots once you tip them out of the pot.

Each dahlia gets a few more handfuls of compost, a layer of Strulch (a mulch made from wheat straw that helps keep slugs off), and a dose of organic slug deterrent. We don’t love using it, but we can’t afford to see our entire dahlia crop devoured by slugs.

I should have mulched all the beds, but it’s another large cost and I thought I could manage without it. Once I got back from our break and saw the weeds, I succumbed and bought a couple of bulk bags. Of course, this has meant shovelling it all on in the heat.