Hey guys, as I was sat sorting through my dahlia prints I realised I hadn’t done a blog post for the month! So, given I am currently in the middle of digging, cleaning and storing tubers I thought I would tie this altogether with a nice dahlia-centric post.
As an artist I live life with my eyes open looking for nuggets of inspiration. For me its not a conscious thing either, I am just here, living my life and boom – a pretty flower swaying in a gentle evening breeze with a gorgeous orange ombre backdrop is enough to get that hair-tingling moment where all I can think of is that moment in time and the sudden chomping need I have to draw it on paper and if I am lucky I will have my cell phone on me so I can snap it and store it away for when I have time to indulge in art.
And that was it. That flower swaying in the evening breeze was a dahlia that was planted on a neighbour’s whole front section, the area was brimming with every possible dahlia colour. There were so many that they pressed up against the low fence and almost gloatingly dangled over it willing me to pick them and take them home. However, they weren’t mine to pick so I high-tailed it to Mitre 10 the next day and found my first – Banana Cabana and Checkers. From there the fever dream of dahlias took hold and I fast went from two dahlias that season to a massive 50-odd leap the next. I was enraptured and completely helpless to their beauty. The following season I did another leap but remained under 100 (and that was me being conservative to appease the wallet and the husband, I could have easily gone mad and still could).
Of course, more than I liked were lost to rot and failure to thrive so the number dipped a little but I was very pleased with the harvest this season, except for the rare few I managed to secure which ended up giving me the middle finger in regards to tuber production! Still, I’ve been feeling lucky enough that it doesn’t appear to be a theme.
This summer the first thing I saw when I looked out my bedroom windows were my dahlia beds (I have massive windows in the master bedroom in an early 1900’s villa, so it’s very much a landscape view). It was such an awe-inspiring and beautiful display to wake to. I felt lucky to see it and that made me just want to give everyone the same joy they bring me, often foisting blooms and tubers onto friends and family, most of who are now addicted to them also…
With the array of dahlias available and mass of reference pictures I couldn’t not draw them, especially when I captured a bumble bee in mid flight above my Sweet Nathalie variety, it was a gorgeous picture and one that started my series – (a surprising suggestion from the hubby, thanks gorgeous!). Now I have Sweet Nathalie, Wizard of Oz and Nonette making up the first three of my series of 5. It is a hope of mine to catalogue all my dahlias in drawings. We shall see, as that is part of my long-term plans!
If you are thinking about adding dahlias to the garden then I would highly recommend them. Anything from the Café Au Lait range is a great start, they are massive uniformed blooms (except for Café Au Lait Paris), their colour range is on the neutral-blush scale, but CAL Rose is a gorgeous mid-pink colour that looks great on its own or with others if you are wanting something with a bit more of a presence – they also make for a perfect vase flower.
Some of my other favorites from this season were:
Molly Raven; Daisy Duke; Nonette; Bohemian Spartacus; Myrtle’s Folly and Evanah
Most do well if you ignore them, others enjoy a bit of fussing over but some you can nurture and lavish attention on and they will die on you as a reward for your efforts anyway. They are the most beautiful and frustratingly capricious plants I have had the pleasure of owning, so just be prepared for that aspect – with great joy and beauty can come great frustration!
The care of them is relatively straightforward (in theory) – I plant mine about December. The rule of thumb is anytime after Labour Weekend, when most of the threats of frosts has passed. However, I know my area where I live likes to rain a lot right up to December and because I don’t want to risk tuber rot by planting into the garden during this time I will start them in pots on the veranda so they are protected and I can control their watering, as when in tuber form they don’t actually need watering until true leaves start to form and the leaves wilt. Once I hit December if the plant is particular fast out of the gate growth wise I will plant out in my gardens. It can make for late blooms, however, as mine didn’t start until late Jan but they carried on through til late April. During this time frame I used seaweed tea, I think the stuff is great as long as you don’t sniff it. Then March/April I used some potato fertiliser to encourage tuber production. When the flower heads start becoming smaller and the stalks weaker that is when I start cutting the plant back to the level below flower head production so the plant still has plenty of leaves to produce energy to send into the tubers instead of flowers. I make sure to cap any exposed hollow stalks too, as I don’t want water getting down to the tubers and rotting them. I use to use foil to cap them off but I found just reusing their own snipped stalks works quite well, funnily enough. When the frosts finally hit and decimated them was when I cut back further. Then I waited 2-3 weeks before lifting.
Now, lifting – there is not a general consensus of whether to leave or lift. People choose differently everywhere. Some have great success in leaving them and sometimes they will leave for a couple of years before lifting so they can enjoy a boon harvest of tubers. However, I lift because I know my area gets quite wet over winter and my land doesn’t have the best drainage – though the gardens themselves are raised I still don’t have the kahunas to leave them in the soil, if I were to I would definitely cover them in pea straw in an attempt to protect them but see above – I don’t have the kahunas to leave them! I know I would spend the winter months stressing that they were rotting.
SO, with that in mind I lift and store them and even then it isn’t guaranteed that they will survive till next season, some don’t have enough energy stored so will fail and either rot or turn into a decimated husk. Not all varieties store well either, the Jowey range often have this problem.
On a side note: I have the tiniest tubers from Jowey Bianca (hard to find variety too) as her tuber rotted and I was able to propagate the lone shoot that was left, but that is my concern – that she will end up not surviving the winter despite my best efforts. So, I have brought her inside and keep her in my bedside draw (in a brown bag full of shavings by the way, not some lone tuber chilling in an empty draw, which would actually be hilarious and make my family question my sanity… if they haven’t already) so I can frequently check on her and as soon as I see eyes/shoots she’s going in soil, inside if need be – I have a plan! And if she fails, I think I will actually cry – yes, I am that invested.
When I store the tubers I like to reuse the kraft bags from Woolworths that I get my groceries in every week and fill them with shavings – Farmlands sell a massive bale, this is good value for money. I hose down the tubers, let them dry for a few days and put them in the bags which then go into a box and hey presto. Stored. Course there are other ways, some use crates but I don’t have a safe enough place to store them this way (I have chickens which think tubers are yummy – hence chickens and dahlias don’t go together (so maybe I am a tad insane).
What does all this prattling have to do with art? Well – my gardens, dahlias in particular is all part and parcel of joy and expression of self. To be surrounded by beauty allows my imagination to run rampant and it can also act as a tranquil retreat from it, as I always am thinking what can I draw next. The flip side is that I can’t draw if I am not inspired.
I like to draw what I think others will enjoy, what inspires joy in me – what is meaningful. It is why I enjoy drawing people’s pets too – the emotion my art invokes in the person who ordered the commission is such a reward, but it is a two-way relationship – the drawing of the portrait brings such joy and emotions in me, as I focus so much on capturing the essence of the animal which is obvious in its photos, especially in the eyes. I feel if I can get the eyes right then the rest of the animal will come together and in fact that is something people often remark that I have captured.
With dahlias, I doubt anyone would tell me I have captured the dahlia’s colourful personality… or maybe they would! But to me its more the vibrancy of colour that brings those same feelings, getting the colouring just right, the layering work that goes into getting that right tone… that brings joy and I believe it is translated in some weird incomprehensible way to the viewer – hence the quote from Tim Crouch “Art is a subjective thing, and it should be a subjective thing.”
Anyway, if you have stuck with me for this and feel like adding what your favourite dahlia is please feel free to comment as I am taking suggestions for the next dahlia in the series!!