Off With Their Heads!

Dahlias bloom and bloom — But only if you keep the old blooms cut off.

The process of removing spent blooms is called deadheading. Or as I like to say “ Off with their heads!” It can be a rather therapeutic process.

Later in the season I find we do more deadheading because there are less “quality” blooms. We get more smaller blooms or crooked stems because the stems get weaker as the season draws to a close.

On Fridays, we’ve begun to deadhead our field instead of harvesting it. Early in the season, I can usually find a place for the Friday blooms. I call them the “Friday Blooms” because at that point it’s too late to sell them to our florists (unless we get a last minute panic call) and since we don’t do farmer’s markets- they occasionally don’t have a home. Most weeks we donate/give away or we have an event at the farm to use up the Friday Blooms. But late in the season like this, it’s less labor to just deadhead them. The deadheading process takes an hour and a half whereas harvesting would take several hours.

I also think it’s not a bad idea to leave as much foliage on the plant this time of year to photosynthesize and let the plants make as many tubers as they can. When the daylight hours begin to shorten, those plants really get busy making tubers so why not give them a boost with some extra plant material.

If you don’t deadhead, the plant will begin to make seed heads. And if you are a dahlia breeder, then by all means- collect those seeds! But if tubers are your goal once the flowering stops, get to deadheading!