{"id":10667,"date":"2020-11-08T19:50:12","date_gmt":"2020-11-08T19:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/overwintering-dahlias\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T00:18:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T00:18:40","slug":"overwintering-dahlias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/overwintering-dahlias\/","title":{"rendered":"Overwintering Dahlias in Zone 7\/6b"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h4>\n

Regenerative No-Dig System for Overwintering Dahlias in Zone 6b\/7<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Initial Planting of Dahlias<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Prepare new beds for planting using no-till methods such as cardboard and deep mulch and\/or cover cropping and tarping. Amend soil according to soil test recommendations. Pay particular attention to pH and mineral content. Dahlias prefer a pH around 6.5; slightly acidic. It will be difficult to change the pH once the overwintering dahlias are perennialized so be sure to take the time to make adjustments prior to planting.<\/p>\n

In Zone 6b\/7, new dahlia tubers are typically planted in early to mid-May once danger of frost has passed. Dahlias can be planted anywhere from 18\u201d to 36\u201d apart, depending on your goals and available space. At Love \u2018n Fresh Flowers, dahlias are planted 18\u201d apart for maximum production of cut flowers with long straight stems.<\/p>\n

Overwintering Dahlias<\/strong><\/h4>\n

For overwintering dahlias in the ground here at Love \u2018n Fresh Flowers in Zone 6b\/7, the following steps are taken:<\/p>\n

1. Wait until a hard frost has turned the plants black to put the dahlias to bed. If no hard frost has happened by early November, it is safe to begin anyway.<\/p>\n

2. Cut the dahlias down at the base, leaving only an inch or two at most of a \u201cstump\u201d. Lay the cut debris directly on top of the dahlias beds so it can compost in place and feed next year\u2019s crop. Chopping up the stems into slightly smaller pieces may help them be a little more tidy on top of the beds.\u00a0 *We use a mulching push mower if the plants aren\\’t too massive and the mower can get through them.\u00a0 You could also use a flail mower.\u00a0 If you do not have a mower, just going through and cutting them down by hand.<\/p>\n

3. After all plants are cut down in the patch, broadcast\/side dress any soil amendments as determined by a soil test taken in August (i.e., sulfur or lime to adjust pH or rock dusts to address a certain mineral deficiency).<\/p>\n

4. After soil amendments are broadcast, add a layer of aged compost to the overwintering dahlia beds, ideally 1-2 inches, to provide a rich carbon source for the soil biology over the winter and to cover the soil amendments so they are naturally incorporated more quickly.<\/p>\n

5. OPTIONAL After the compost is added, use a broad fork to loosen the soil around the edges of each bed. While some tubers may be damaged slightly by this forking, if your overwintering dahlias are in the ground for several seasons, the soil settles and you\\’ll want to get air pockets back into the soil for good oxygen exchange. Insert the broad fork deeply at the side<\/em> of the bed and wiggle it back and forth to open up the \u201ccrust\u201d. Do not invert\/turn the soil in any way. Just loosen it. Do this along all outside edges of the dahlias beds.<\/p>\n

6. Now it\\’s time to put a thick blanket over the entire patch. At Love \u2018n Fresh Flowers, we use a combination of leaves and straw, depending on what we can get most easily each year. Grocery stores are usually tossing straw bales from their autumn displays right after Halloween as they change over for Christmas. Perfect timing to snag them for your dahlia beds. Many people are removing leaves from their lawns in early November too so also a free resource. You may be able to partner with a lawncare service or local municipality to have them dump leaves at your farm, which is very convenient, but the quality of these sources may be questionable and include lots of trash. Pine straw is another great option if you\u2019ve got lots of pine forests near you. Regardless of the source and material, spread 8\u201d-12\u201d over the entire dahlia patch (walkways included). This will insulate your tubers through the coldest days of winter.<\/p>\n

8. OPTIONAL After spreading the leaves and\/or straw, spray the surface with JMS (or what I call \\”leaf mold tea\\”). Create the tea by collecting a big handful of rich, decomposed leaf mold from a nearby wooded area and steeping it in a bucket of water (use cheese cloth or a fine mesh strainer to hold the leaf mold) with a boiled potato as a food source for the abundant natural biology found in the handful of leaf mold. Steep the tea for about a 4-5 days before straining it and applying it with a sprayer or watering can to the surface of your dahlia beds already tucked under their \u201cblanket\u201d of organic matter. This tea will enliven the entire system in your perennialized dahlias to keep the soil loose and active from season to season. I learned how to make this using the book The Regenerative Grower\\’s Guide to Garden Amendments<\/em> by Nigel Palmer.<\/p>\n

9. Last step is to officially tuck in the overwintering dahlias with tarps. Use large heavy impermeable (water tight) tarps to cover the entire dahlia patch. At Love \u2018n Fresh Flowers, we use old billboards, but silage tarps and\/or construction tarps will also work well. Weight down the tarps with sand bags and\/or rocks. Be sure to put plenty of weights on the tarps (far more than you think are necessary!) because the winter winds will blow off the tarps and expose your dahlias to cold if you don\u2019t have them well-secured.<\/p>\n

Maintaining Established Perennial Dahlia Beds<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Once the dahlias are established, the following steps are taken to ensure their longevity and productivity:<\/p>\n

1. Pull the tarps off of the beds in mid-April when the temperatures seem to stabilize. It helps to peek under the tarps from time to time to see if there are any shoots pushing through. If there are, it\u2019s time to take the tarps off.\u00a0 \u00a0Over the course of the winter, the soil biology (earthworms, microbes, etc) will have been making good use of the organic mulch too and we find that typically there\\’s only about an inch or so left of all the leaves and straw we put on at the start of the winter.\u00a0 So no need to worry about pulling off the leaves\/straw.\u00a0 In fact, it\\’s the perfect thickness to provide some weed control at the start of spring.\u00a0 One thing we do right away after taking the tarps off again and repeat every three weeks or so is spread pellets of the product Sluggo Plus on the beds, which controls slugs and earwigs which sometimes build up over the winter under the tarps.\u00a0 This product is organic and does a great job.\u00a0 You could also use homemade beer traps or create habitat for natural slug predators like ground beetles, garden snakes, and\/or toads.<\/p>\n

2. Overwintering dahlias are pinched once or twice to improve stem quality later in the season. Plants are pinched when they are about 8 inches high and\/or have four sets of healthy leaves on the stem and may also be pinched once again when they grow back to 8 inches high after the first pinch. For each pinch, half the stem is removed (the stem is cut so two sets of leaves are taken off and two sets of leaves remain). The first pinch for perennialized dahlias is usually in mid-May. You may use the cuttings from pinching to root new plants.<\/p>\n

4. The dahlias are fed throughout the season with a foliar spray calibrated to the plants\u2019 needs at that stage in their growing cycle. Dahlias need a lot of nutrition for good flower production and plant scaffolding. Foliar feeding is the best method for delivering nutrients to perennialized dahlias.\u00a0 We use several Korean Natural Farming (KNF) applications on our dahlias here at Love \\’n Fresh Flowers as well as application of fish emulsion and kelp.<\/p>\n

5. Harvest of flowers occurs throughout the season. With perennialized overwintering dahlias in Zone 6b\/7, the first substantial harvest usually begins in late June and continues through late October. Peak production is in September.<\/p>\n

6. Take soil samples for testing in late August to determine amendments that may need to be added in the coming autumn.<\/p>\n

7. If desired, you may dig and divide tubers to increase your number of plants. Otherwise, no digging and dividing seems to be necessary in my experience. At Love \u2018n Fresh Flowers, overwintering dahlias have been in the ground for five seasons without any dividing and they continue to be highly productive and healthy.\u00a0 If you\\’d like to increase your number of dahlia plants but don\\’t want to disturb your soil by digging up tubers, you can take cuttings instead to root and create new baby plants.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Regenerative No-Dig System for Overwintering Dahlias in Zone 6b\/7 Initial Planting of Dahlias Prepare new beds for planting using no-till methods such as cardboard and deep mulch and\/or cover cropping and tarping. Amend soil according to soil test recommendations. Pay particular attention to pH and mineral content. Dahlias prefer a pH around 6.5; slightly acidic. 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Amend soil according to soil test recommendations. Pay particular attention to pH and mineral content. Dahlias prefer a pH around 6.5; slightly acidic.…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10667"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13946,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10667\/revisions\/13946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lovenfreshflowers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}