Dahlias are making a big comeback, gradually returning to our gardens and into floral bouquets. There is an endless variety of types, colors, and shapes; just in our shop you will find over 70 types of dahlias, and that is just a fraction.

Compared to other garden varieties, they require a little more care. They are extremely sensitive to frost; even 0 °C is enough to turn dahlia leaves brown, and you won't get a single bloom from them. The underground part of the plant, the tuber, is also extremely sensitive to frost. Therefore, if you want to keep your dahlias for the next year, you must dig up and store the tubers every autumn.

Dahlias come as tubers (the underground part of the plant, similar to potatoes), seedlings, or seeds. If you order dahlias from us, you will receive seedlings.

Even though dahlias need proper attention — watering, fertilizing, pinching, and digging up in the autumn — you get a huge reward for all that work! From each plant, you will harvest 14 (or more) flowers with sizes exceeding roses or peonies, and the variety of dahlias is truly endless.

If you buy dahlias from Loukykvět, we send them as seedlings. For us, this is the best way — you have a 100% guarantee that the plant is healthy and alive, you don't have to look for eyes or figure out which way to plant the tuber. Most importantly, these seedlings will develop full-grown tubers this year and, of course, will bloom. Plus, they have a 4–6 week head start compared to a tuber.

We recommend planting only after the last frosts, which in our region means from May 15th onwards. Dahlias are very sensitive to frost, and it would be a terrible shame to lose such beauty right at the beginning. If you decide to plant earlier, keep an eye on night temperatures to see if they are near zero; even at 4°C – 5°C, ground frosts can occur.

The later you plant, the later they will bloom, so ideally don't delay planting so you can enjoy them as soon as possible. Mid-May, immediately after the last frosts, is ideal.

If the dahlias arrive early, you can plant them in a frost-free area (a heated greenhouse, polytunnel, etc.). If you don't have such a space and plan to plant outdoors, just replant them into a larger pot¹ after delivery, where they will wait until the outdoor frosts are over.

Dahlias bloom from the second half of summer and easily last until the first frosts. There are years when the first frost hits in the second half of September, and other times it doesn't freeze, and dahlias bloom until the end of October or the beginning of November.

As soon as the first frosts hit, the dahlias will change color completely and turn brown. At that moment, you can dig them up and store their tubers for the winter. By the beginning of November at the latest, all tubers should be dug up and under cover.

For planting dahlias, the tools you already have in the garden are plenty — a spade or a small trowel and a rake. There is no need for any other fancy tools. Besides the tools, we will need compost and possibly some sand.

It is good to incorporate a thin layer of compost into the bottom of the bed; it is always better to use your own compost rather than one from an industrial composting plant, and definitely use one that is at least a year old; do not use fresh manure or fresh poultry droppings.

If you have heavy soil where water sits, we definitely recommend slightly sanding the soil. You don't have to buy expensive silica sand; either take sand you have at hand (sandbox sand) or go for the simplest kind, such as concrete sand¹. We mix the sand with the soil so that it is permeable and water drains away and doesn't sit. Dahlias need plenty of water, but if water pools in the beds, they won't cope well.

For dahlias, it is always appropriate to choose a sunny spot with all-day sun. Here on the farm, the sun beats down on the dahlias all day. We do not recommend planting dahlias in semi-shade or shady locations at all. They won't thrive, they will stretch towards the sun, and they will hardly bloom.

Dahlias can also be grown on a balcony; there are even dahlia types specifically created for window boxes; however, that is not the case with our dahlias — they are all suitable for cutting, which means they are quite large and tall plants. If you plan to plant dahlias on a terrace or in a window box, it must be a large pot of at least 25 × 25 cm.

We recommend planting at a spacing of 45–65 cm, depending on whether you want the dahlias to form a dense bush and interlink or if you want individual plants as solitaires. On our farm, we have limited space and plant dahlias densely, individual plants are 33 cm apart; we would not recommend tighter spacing.

Pinching is absolutely essential for dahlias. It encourages further branching and grows a beautiful bushy plant that produces more stems that you can then harvest and put in a vase.

Most importantly, don't worry, pinching is not a complicated maneuver; it is simply cutting off the top part of the plant (the terminal). You nip off the top, but the plant wants to keep growing upward, so it pushes out new shoots under the cut part, creating a strong, bushy plant.

All the seedlings that arrived have already been pinched once. For the ideal result, we recommend repeating the pinching another 2 times.

After 2–4 weeks, pinch the plant with scissors by cutting off the top of the dahlia. Cut the shoot all the way to the next leaves so that no stump remains on the plant after cutting.

It may seem counterproductive because you are delaying the date your dahlia will bloom, but be patient, it pays off. On the farm, we walk on all fours and pinch all our dahlias this way. If this step is skipped, you will get one long, spindly dahlia noodle instead of a bushy plant.

In the photo below, you can see a pinched dahlia already pushing out side shoots.

During the summer, heavy rains and winds or storms may occur, so we recommend providing sufficient support for the dahlias so they don't break off during downpours.

On our farm, steel posts¹ and string or a strap work best for us. In domestic conditions, any thicker rod will work perfectly; it could be a steel pipe, a wooden stake, or any other post. Choose what will work in your garden and look good as well.

You simply stretch a string around the stakes. It is good to add one or two more levels of string as the dahlias grow in height. Some have such large flowers that they have a tendency to tilt and bend; the string will hold them up perfectly.

Another form of support is to plant the dahlias closer together (~ 45 cm); they will beautifully intergrow and hold each other up. It is then much easier and more effective to create support around a group of such interlinked dahlias than to tie up each plant individually.

If you are growing a dahlia in a pot, we also recommend support for it. In this case, for example, a bamboo stake to which you tie the dahlia will suffice.

Dahlias require a lot of water. During warm & sunny days, dahlias evaporate an incredible amount of water through their leaves. On extremely hot days, you may observe that the dahlia has wilted a bit; this is your signal that it is no longer good to delay watering.

The best way to water is to water the dahlia directly at the roots; forget about various sprinklers or misting with a garden hose. Stretch the garden hose directly to the dahlia roots and turn on the water at a limited flow, letting the dahlias soak through.

For irrigation, more water less often works much better than watering more often with smaller amounts of water. So, once a week, take 30 minutes and thoroughly soak the dahlias.

Dahlias are extremely sensitive to herbicide residues in the soil, so for weeds, use only a hoe and keep the beds cultivated. After you have hoed the beds 1–2 times, you can mulch the bed with straw to suppress weeds. When hoeing the beds, be careful not to damage the dahlia tuber.

Besides abundant watering, dahlias need plenty of nutrients to grow and bloom lushly. In the beginning, we recommend fertilizing with a fertilizer containing mostly nitrogen.

Fertilizers always have their composition and NPK element ratio listed, where N is nitrogen, P is phosphorus, K is potassium. The composition of the fertilizer can be listed as — "19-6-20", which means it contains 19 parts N, 6 parts P, 20 parts K. If you are looking for a fertilizer with an increased nitrogen content, the first number (N) should be 2× larger than the remaining two (P and K).

As for organic fertilizers, you can use, e.g., pelleted poultry manure (ORGANICA N), which you work into the bed. From synthetic fertilizers, you can use Kristalon Start or any other where the N element predominates in the composition. Nitrogen will support the growth of leaves and stems. You can apply the fertilizer by working it into the soil, by fertilizing with a watering can, or by foliar spray.

As soon as you see that the dahlias are starting to have their first buds, we recommend stopping nitrogen fertilization and reaching for a fertilizer with a potassium (K) predominance. Potassium will ensure the plant blooms lushly, strengthen the stems, and help the root system. From organic fertilizers, you can use, e.g., ProKton or Free PK. From synthetic fertilizers, choose Kristalon Bloom and Flower, or any other fertilizer where K predominates in the composition. Kristalon Bloom and Flower has an NPK composition of 15-5-30, i.e., there is 2× more potassium (K) in it.

If you ensure good growing conditions for the dahlias (nutrients, watering, etc.), they will be less susceptible to diseases and pests. At the beginning of summer, aphids may appear on the plants. Aphids can cause curling and twisting of the leaves on the plant, but most importantly, they transmit viral diseases. From ecological products, you can use Neem Azal or possibly Wetcit against aphids.

Every year, we plant over 8,000 dahlias, which are intended for the production of cut flowers. The quantity of dahlias that we must fit into our dahlia field is endless, and on top of that, our "test garden" where we test new varieties for next year grows every year. That's why we chose closer spacing.

Our bed is 110 cm wide so that we can mechanically dig up the dahlias. The paths between the individual beds are 80 cm. We wouldn't recommend narrower paths, as for some varieties, we barely manage to pass through the path.

Each bed has two rows of dahlias. In the row, the plants are 33 cm apart. The rows themselves are then 33 cm apart. One row of dahlias equals one run of drip irrigation tubing. It is important to ensure you have the dripper right next to the seedling.

By planting at the same spacing as the drippers on the drip irrigation tubing, we don't have to measure the spacing at all; we simply turn on the irrigation for a moment, and it marks the spots for planting. Simultaneously, the dahlia is right next to the source of moisture. We don't worry about the seedling drying out in the spring, and there is no need to walk through the field with a hose. And finally, you also save water since you are only watering the plants and not the empty spaces in the bed.

If you are a flower farm and need to harvest as much as possible from your dahlias, it is important to regularly cut off all dead flowers. After blooming, seeds begin to form, which exhausts the plant, leaving it with less energy for flowering. We managed to get onto a system where we cut off dead flowers right during the harvest. Two birds with one stone.