My dahlia experiment

I've been conducting an experiment this year, a dahlia experiment. When it comes to gardening I have a tendency to get over enthusiastic and spend a little too much housekeeping on plants. To save us living off beans for the summer I thought I'd reign in my enthusiasm and experiment with buying a range of different priced dahlia tubers, seeing what grows best and then stocking up on the most successful for next year.

I bought a selection of tubers from Sarah Raven, Taylor's, Wilko and Poundland, planted them on the same day in the same size pots and kept them in my greenhouse until June time where I transferred onto my patio. From there nature did its thing and this is what I found...

From Sarah Raven I bought Cafe au Lait, Henriette and Wizard of Oz. Disappointingly the only plant to flower was the Wizard of Oz but it was the first to bloom and has given me the most flowers of all the tubers.

From Taylor's I bought (from the garden centre) Golden Scepter and Apricot Star, both have flowered but not as much as I'd have hoped. Apricot Star is gorgeous and lasts as a cut flower for about two weeks which makes it worth while but Golden Scepter hasn't set my world on fire

From Wilko I bought a cream and mauve dahlia (I lost the packets so don't know the actual names) these have been so good, especially the cream one. I've had plenty of flowers and they last when cut. I really love the mauve colour and messy petals.

From Poundland I bought two packets of tubers (each has three tubers per pack). These have been a snails favourite but despite that they have still produced lots of flowers. Even though these were the cheapest I've loved unexpected the jewel colours.

So what did I learn from my experiment? Buying fancy tubers doesn't guarantee flowers, next year I'll bulk buy cheaper tubers and maybe add one or two others that I love  (I will not get swept up in buying something because it looks good on Instagram!). Dahlias need more space and water than I thought - I was so worried about over watering I went the other way. I'll start them in bigger pots next year and brave putting them into the ground so they have more access to water. I'll definitely add them to my cut flower bed at the allotment as I can add liberal sprinklings of slug pellets and generally be a little less precious about growing them. Another big lesson I've learnt is they look best in bulk so I'll stick to buying a couple of colours that I love rather than a big mixture like this year (I'm thinking crazy pinks).

If like me you're new to gardening and growing I really hope this post helps. You can't beat the satisfaction of having home grown flowers. X