Dreaming of FLOWERS and the coming Summer Growing Season: Cactus-Flowered Dahlia

Oh it's January and like many growers, I'm starting to feel the itch to plant. It's a bit too early to do that so I thought I'd start a new series of posts and share a bit more about some of the things we grow on our micro-farm.

I absolutely love growing flowers. They attract pollinators and make everything so pretty. These pictures are of cactus-flowered dahlias I grew from seed a couple years ago. Their bright twisty petals are so unusual and remind me of beautiful neon colored sea anemones. There were single and double blooms and many exceeded 5" in diameter. We will definitely be growing them again this year -- and selling potted starts in the spring, of course.

Dahlias are generally NOT perennial in New Mexico. That said, I have heard that some growers have been able to create protected micro-climates that allow dahlias to grow perennially. I'm doing some experimenting with this right now and I'm excited to see if it will work. Yet another reason I'm super excited for the 2024 summer growing season.

All that said, dahlias started from seed absolutely do produce tubers that may be lifted from the ground after the first frost in fall and stored for planting the following spring--if you want to ensure the cold and frost doesn't kill off your plants and/or you wish to grow bigger plants and blooms the following year. Alternatively, you may wish to simply treat dahlias as annuals and either purchase starts or start them from seed yourself each year.