Vea
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Notice to Vacate: An Eviction Letter to the Pests Eating My Dahlias
Green Lacewing (one of the good guys), waiting patiently. To the spider mites, the earwigs, and especially the thrips, residing without permission at the property known as My Garden: This letter serves as formal notice that your tenancy is terminated, effective immediately. I’d like to say it’s nothing personal, but it is most definitely personal.…
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From Tuber to Bloom: Tracking My Indian Summer Dahlia (& Why You’ll Want to Track Yours)
If you’ve ever flipped over a dahlia tuber package or scoured the internet hoping to find out how long it takes dahlias to bloom, you already know the answer is somewhere between vague and useless. Dahlias can take anywhere from 45 to 120 days from planting to bloom, depending on variety, weather, and how happy…
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A Perfectly Imperfect Fourth of July Garden Gathering
The dream is a breezy backyard picnic with fresh-cut flowers straight from my garden on the table, something cold in every glass, great music, and a menu that rivals the best BBQ pitmaster. The reality is kids running all over the place, water balloons flying, someone looking for bug spray, the ice melted, and, on…
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Dahlia Obsession: Beautiful, Mysterious, and Slightly Unreasonable
A few weeks ago, while working on my never-quite-finished mystery novel, I found myself stuck on a plot problem. I needed a character who was beautiful, dramatic, and could inspire obsession, poor decision-making, and financial ruin. Then I looked out the window at my dahlias. Problem solved. As a self-confessed dahlia addict and aspiring mystery…
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My Dahlias Are Thirsty (And Honestly, So Am I)
Every summer there comes a moment when I stop fantasizing about the flower farm life and start feeling like a volunteer firefighter on hose duty. The dahlias are thirsty. The zinnias are thirsty. The hanging baskets are thirsty. Even the weeds somehow look thirsty. And honestly, so am I. By late June, I’m dragging the…
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My Ugly Garden: Why I’ve Stopped Apologizing For It
There’s a strip of garden that runs along the side of my house, right next to the back door. You pass it every single time you go outside. Which means I have seen it approximately ten thousand times this season, and every single time I have thought: I really need to deal with that. Multiply that…
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Just One More
A few weeks ago, the planting part of the season was officially over. The budget was spent. The pots were full. Well, almost. To be honest, I still have five tubers sitting in my little urban greenhouse, waiting to be planted. But those just arrived. Black Satin, Shadow Cat, Ferncliff Midnight, and Gypsy Midnight, I…
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York, We Need to Talk
York, we need to talk. And before you say anything, please know, this isn’t easy for me either. For weeks I’ve been trying very hard to trust you. I made excuses. I blamed thrips. Mites. Poor lighting in my photos. For a moment, I even blamed myself for being paranoid. But then you went and…
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Confessions of a Weekend Gardener
I have a confession to make. Every year I start planning my garden convinced that this will be the season I finally get organized. I build my master garden plan weeks in advance, convinced that I will finally rip out the overrun hosta along the driveway, and the lilies that have taken over the garden…
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Small Garden, Big Dreams
Gardeners are dreamers. It doesn’t matter whether you’re growing dahlias in a single container on a patio, tending a backyard cutting garden, or planting rows of flowers across an entire field. We all have one thing in common: We’re always imagining what’s next. One more variety. One more garden bed. One more season to try…
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3 Ways I’m Staking My Dahlias This Season
All dahlia growers eventually learn the same thing: those big beautiful blooms need support. The first year I grew a dinnerplate dahlia, I learned this the hard way. Between summer storms, heavy flowers, and plants that seem to grow taller almost overnight, staking is one of those jobs that may not feel so important in…
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Why I Keep a Garden Journal (And Think You Should Too)
There is a moment that happens to almost every gardener. You stand in front of a plant that is thriving, or struggling, and think: “What did I do last year?” Which fertilizer worked? When did I plant this? Where did I buy those dahlias? When did the aphids show up? Did this variety bloom early…
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Protecting Dahlias From Heavy Rain
How I baby my newly planted dahlias through spring storms, and when I finally stop worrying There’s a particular kind of stress that only plant moms (and dads) understand: standing at the window watching the heavy rain roll in right after you’ve planted your dahlias. The weather app says three straight days of soaking rain.Your…
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The Quiet Things Growing Underground
Gardening, in large part, is an exercise in faith. You carefully press your seeds into the soil, cover them with dirt, water them gently, and wait. Days pass. Sometimes weeks. The trays remain still.The soil looks unchanged.No green. No movement. No proof that anything is happening beneath the surface. And yet, every morning, you check…
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Growing Dahlias in Containers: A Realistic Guide for Small Gardens, Patios, and Flower Lovers
Yes, you can grow dahlias in containers. In fact growing dahlias in pots brings it’s own special magic to the backyard. For me, it’s the way the patio changes over the season. It starts as this mix matched collection of potted dirt and a few hopeful little sprouts. Slowly it turns into corners overflowing with…
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My Simple Dahlia Fertilizing Plan
I started growing dahlias more than ten years ago. Back then, I’d pick up a few tubers from the local garden center each spring and, I hate to admit it, I treated them like annuals. Once I learned you could dig them up, store them, and replant them year after year, it completely changed the…
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Creating a Garden That Feels Beautiful, Not Perfect
One of the things that makes a flower garden so special is that it’s never truly perfect. Some blooms lean sideways. Some plants grow taller than expected. There are gaps where seeds never sprouted, petals weathered by rain, and flower beds that somehow become overgrown by mid-summer. And honestly, that’s the beauty of it. In…
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Early Morning Greenhouse Rituals & the Start of Dahlia Season
There’s a certain kind of excitement that arrives long before the flowers do. For dahlia lovers, the season begins in the quiet moments, hauling pots in and out each day to slowly harden them off, watching the weather obsessively, and checking trays for any signs of life. I was lucky enough to talk my husband…
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Why Dahlias Have a Way of Taking Over the Garden
There’s something about dahlias that starts innocently enough. Maybe it begins with a single tuber tucked into a garden bed in spring. Maybe it’s one bouquet at the farmer’s market or a photo of a flower so perfect it hardly looks real. But somewhere between the first sprouts emerging and the late-summer explosion of flowers,…