DAHLIAS

Dahlia are extremely popular wedding flowers, not only for their looks but also for their symbolic meaning. During the Victorian era, dahlias were a symbol of commitment and an everlasting union. Dahlia flower meanings include beauty, eternal love, inner strength, dignity, and kindness. Depending on the flower color, context, and culture, dahlias symbolize themes of celebration, relationships, and resilience. 

Dahlias are a profoundly beautiful flower and an excellent choice for any floral arrangement. 

Dahlia flowers come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. From delicate single-petaled flowers to large, fully double flowers resembling pom-poms, there is a dahlia for every preference.There are 30 species and over 20,000 cultivars of dahlias. Those cultivars are categorized based on size, flower pattern, and how they resemble other flowers (like waterlilies, anemones, and cactus blooms). The larger bloom styles ('formal decorative', 'decorative', 'dinnerplate' and 'cactus') are among the most popular.They have no scent so they're an excellent choice for people with allergies.  

At Queen Bee, we find dahlias utterly beautiful, fascinating and worthy of obsession. 

Here are some of the reasons why.

Dahlias can be grown in 3 different ways: from seeds, by tuber or by 'cuttings'.

• Tubers - The most common method is by planting a tuber. At the end of the season (after 1st frost), tubers are dug up, cleaned and stored in a cool dark place that stays between 40 and 50 degrees. In Spring, the tubers come out of storage to 'wake up'. This is when growers typically look for nodes of new growth 'eyes' and divide their tubers (to make more identical dahlia plants). To get a jump on our USDA zone 7a growing season, at Queen Bee, we wake our dahlias up in April. We divide, pot up, label everyone, and put them in a warm sunny spot to sprout. We keep them safe until all risk of frost has gone and soil temperature has warmed up enough to plant them out safely.

• Cuttings - To grow dahlias for cut flowers vs. just for a home garden, to create longer stems, we do something called 'pinching'.  The best time to pinch a dahlia is when it's between 12" and 16" tall and has at least 4 sets of leaves on the center stalk. That is usually sometime in June, depending on the variety. At this point the plant is growing rapidly and will quickly recover from being pinched.  Pinching temporarily redirects the plant's energy toward producing stems and leaves rather than buds. It will take an extra week or two to get flowers, but it's definitely worth the wait. Pinched plants are stronger, less 'leggy', fuller and easier to manage. Plus, all those additional growth points will give you many more flowers. Many dahlia growers 'pinch' their dahlias and move on.  -  At Queen Bee, we do things a little differently. That pinched central stem has received the bulk of the tubers energy, and instead of discarding it like most growers, we coat the exposed stem with Aloe Vera gel (we grow Aloe specifically for this - Aloe contains enzymes to stimulate new growth, which is why we as humans use it for burns), and a little bit of honey (honey's natural sugars help plants grow roots and absorb water and nutrients from the soil. Honey also has antibacterial and antifungal properties to help protect young cuttings from pathogens). - Once established, we pot these 'cuttings' up in 6" pots (sink pots) dig a trench out in the garden, place the pots in the trench with spacing, and cover up with soil.  We keep an eye on  and keep them watered all summer. Because of their shortened timeline in an annual growing season, typically they don't have enough time to bloom before the first frost. Instead of focusing on growing upwards, the cutting focuses on sending its energy back down into the soil to grow roots and produce a tuber that is a genetic duplicate of the parent. In mid October we bring the 'sink pots' back inside and keep them warm, and let them bloom.

• Seeds - At Queen Bee, our Flower Farm does several things at once, in terms of dahlias (see above). One of the toughest is growing out these beautiful varieties with hopes of finding adoring fans for them in cut form, but also letting some of the bloom heads on the plants go 'to seed' near the end of our season.  In the weeks after the first frost, the pods dry out completely and seeds are sorted and saved. 

Singularly the COOLEST thing about dahlias:

•  Plant genetics -Most plants and animals have two sets of chromosomes. Dahlias have eight, resulting in far greater variability in the offspring. As bees fly from flower to flower, they carry pollen from plant to plant. Any one dahlia can produce 1-20 seeds, all of them being genetically unique from one another! This is how new dahlia varieties are created. For a deeper dive, check our Kristine Albrecht (Santa Cruz dahlias) and her work hybridizing new dahlias.

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Before Spring:

We'll  start multiple batches of seeds, from our:

- 2023 dahlia garden 

- Swan Island Dahlias 

- Floret Flower Farm

- Rare Seeds - Baker's Creek

- Johnny's 

 - from our dahlia mentor / friend - John Hambor and his curated dahlia garden in Connecticut. 

(We'll be starting seeds from his 2022 collection, his 2023 collection and  seeds from his 2022 collection that we grew out last year). 

Once established, we'll transfer the seedlings to 4" pots

We'll start about 475 dahlias tubers to be planted out 3rd week of April.

Late April, we'll plant out the dahlias started from seed .

In mid-June we'll 'pinch' the dahlia plants and develop the tops into rooted cuttings.

We expect early bloom varieties in late June, with the bulk of blooms August through first frost in October.

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To catch 'dahlia fever', sign up for a Queen Bee Dahlia Subscription (6, 8, 10 or 12  weeks) 

and you'll see why. 

They're the 'bee's knees'.