Direct Bulbs Gardening Blog

I just wanted to share the last of the Summer colour as we still have some fabulous blooms in the garden, surviving the onset of the first frosts of autumn.

These are 4 of our dahlias which I took photos of on Sunday 19th October – pretty good eh!  Still providing colour to the garden and brightening the borders.  As you can see there are plenty of buds stil on them ready to burst forth – hopefully before the cold snap arrives!

Some of the other varieties still flowering are Nerine Bowdenii shown below in front of another dahlia and next to the Eucomis, which are also still in bloom.

Well it’s with the mild weather we’ve been having so far, the dahlias have been surviving really well! No blackened leaves and dying off flowers to be seen anywhere! We’ve had a good show of the miniature gladioli that we grew for the first time. We always grow traditional gladioli at the allotment but the miniature type are ideal for tubs as they don’t fall over and look fantastic in coloured ceramic pots.

Now’s the time to think about planting for next spring.  We now need to start thinking about emptying out the pots that used to have the summer bulbs in and storing those bulbs for next year to replant in the Spring.  This is what you need to do with gladioli – If you intend to lift them each year, you should ensure that after flowering the foliage is left to die down for a minimum of 6-8 weeks at which point they should be regularly fed with bone meal or similar because it is at this point the bulbs are building back their energy. Any roots will also have dried up and can be removed. The bulbs are then best dusted with yellow sulphur powder and the bulbs can then be stored in a dry, frost free area and will be ready for replanting in March/April.  During storage ensure that mice and rodents don’t eat them and check every few weeks. If they are not kept in a very dry environment, they will start to root quite early in the year.

Dahlias can stay in the ground for a bit longer – we’ve still not had those first frosts yet so enjoy the colour while it’s stil there!!