Putting The Dahlia’s To Bed For The Winter

Zip took to the dahlia garden last year when he came to the farm.  It’s thick enough for him to safely doze in and close to the stone wall and holes where the chipmunks live.

But it isn’t much use to him once the dahlia have died and even less when I dig them up.

Jon sat under the apple tree for a while while I dug up the dahlia bulbs.  Fate hung out in the barnyard with her sheep, Zip sat on Jon’s lap and Zinnia found and ate all the apples hidden in the leaves under the crabapple tree.

Fanny and Lulu stayed close  the fence as I cut the dead dahlias from the bulbs.  They knew I’d be tossing the plants over the fence for them to eat.

Constance, Robin and Lori, joined them.

Marking the dahlias with colored yarn worked well.  I only had one plant that I was unsure of.  I put it in its own bag with a question mark on it.

The other bulbs all went into bags with drawings and the colors of the flowers.  I put the pieces of yarn that I’d tied on them a few weeks ago when the flowers were still blooming in the bags too.

Then I put the bags in the cold storage room in the basement.

I put them in plastic pots, because the bottoms of the bags usually rot away by the time the spring comes. But I leave the bags open so there is plenty of circulation.

One year I put them in plastic pots without the bags and many of them rotted.

While I moved the dahlias into the basement, Jon spread donkey manure in his raised bed gardens.

I put some manure in the dahlia garden too.

Now that the flowers are gone, the chickens will find their way back to the garden.  They’ll scratch up the dirt looking for insect and at the same time mix the manure into the soil.

I’m always a little sad when the dahlias die.  But I also like it when they are safe in the basement for another winter and the garden gets to rest up for the spring.