Giving dahlias a helping hand: the secret to a lush flower garden
22/09/26
The dahlias are looking splendid once again in our flower garden this autumn. But as soon as a flower has finished blooming, we step in. Not to leave the plant in peace, but rather to keep it busy: by removing the dead flowers, we encourage the dahlia to produce new blooms time and time again. This is called deadheading, and in this blog we explain how and why we do it.
What exactly is deadheading?
‘Deadheading’ comes from the English words ‘dead’ and ‘head’ (the head of the flower): you remove the spent flower head from the plant. There are two ways to do this. The first is by hand: you simply pull the flower head off and let it fall to the ground. This way, the dead flower continues to provide nutrients to the plant. If you’d rather remove the whole twig, use pruning shears to cut off the dead twig – with the flower still attached if you like – and throw it on the ground.
A slight difference when arranging bouquets: we always cut the stems at an angle, but when deadheading, we don’t do that. As we make our way through the flowers, we regularly pass the dahlias: some are still looking magnificent, whilst others have finished flowering completely and need to be removed. This ensures the border remains in bloom and gives the plant repeated opportunities to form new buds.
In search of the most beautiful dahlias
To ensure we harvest the largest and most beautiful dahlias, we stretch netting over the border. This provides the plants with support and encourages them to grow tall and straight. The dahlias simply grow right through the mesh of the net, which prevents them from toppling over and ensures the stems remain long and straight. Without the net, the flowers would soon start to droop and grow crooked, which is a shame, because it is precisely those long, straight stems that make them so suitable for bouquets.
What happens if you don’t deadhead
If you simply let a dahlia finish flowering, the flower will go to seed. The plant will then put its energy into producing seed rather than new flowers. As we’d rather have a garden full of flowering dahlias than harvest seed, we keep removing the dead flowers.
We therefore do not propagate dahlias from seed, but from tubers. This is done at the end of the season, once the flowers have finished blooming and the plant begins to die back. You can then lift the tuber, along with the plant, out of the ground, or simply leave it in place if the soil in that spot does not get too wet. If you do dig the tuber out of the ground, you can store it for a few months in a frost-free place, preferably with a bit of sand around it, to ensure it keeps well. Would you like even more dahlias? Then you can divide the tuber, and the following year you’ll have twice as many plants.
Dahlias in our bouquets
All that care we put into our dahlias ultimately ends up on the table too. For our own restaurant, we create wild bouquets, made entirely from flowers from our own flower garden, including, of course, our dahlias. And because at Stadsjochies everything from our own greenhouses and gardens is edible, the same goes for these bouquets.
As well as flowers, we also like to use herbs in our bouquets – something you might not expect, but which looks absolutely stunning. Think of yarrow, the graceful umbels of fennel, bay leaves – which we actually always include – and eucalyptus. So deadheading not only ensures that our dahlias continue to bloom throughout the summer and autumn, it also lays the foundation for the most beautiful bouquets on the table.
