OUR FARM PRACTICES
Dahlias & Dogwood's tubers and blooms are grown here on our family farm using organic, earth-minded practices so you can shop with confidence that you’re getting the healthiest possible product.
Soil Care
Soil is the lifeblood of plants and as its health determines the health of what we grow and sell, our growing practices are soil-focused.
We start each season with a soil sample which informs what nutrients, if any, we add to the soil to restore its balance for optimal plant health.
After an initial tilling to prepare a fallow bed, the soil is thereafter left intact so as not to ruin the soil structure or harm the beneficial soil microbes.
We feed soil microbes (so they "feed" our plants) throughout the season with a layer of straw mulch that slowly decomposes to release nutrients as well as our comfrey tea applications described under "Fertilizing...or Not" below.
In the off-season, each dahlia bed is nourished with a mixed cover crop that enhances soil health by increasing organic matter, protecting it from erosion, and replenishing nutrients for next season’s dahlias.
Biodiversity
Along with soil care, increasing the variety of life (also known as "biodiversity") on our farm is always top of mind. A larger variety of plants brings in a larger variety of insects which brings in a larger variety of birds...you get the idea and that's just what's happening on TOP of the soil.
I experienced firsthand on our farm in Georgia how the more plant species we introduced, the less issues we had with insect populations getting out of balance and the more birds we had hanging around--bluebirds, cardinals, and a family of golden finches--I miss you guys.
To increase biodiversity in our dahlia patch, we include “bio beds” (short for “biodiversity beds”) in which we grow a variety of plants that are known to bring in beneficial insects and feed local pollinators—two things dahlias raised for cut flowers aren’t great at!
These beds are seeded and/or planted with native wildflowers, yarrow, echinacea, aster, salvia, black-eyed Susan, calendula and comfrey.
Fertilizing...Or Not
Because we spend so much attention on our soil prep and care, our need for fertilization throughout the growing season is negligible.
We do fertilize our dahlias with bone meal at planting and one month thereafter to get them off to a good start.
Afterwards, we feed our soil microbes and keep our dahlias thriving with our bi-weekly foliar spray of our farm-brewed comfrey tea. We also include humic and fulvic acid, kelp meal, and unsulfured blackstrap molasses in our super stinky brew.
This comfrey, humic acid, fulvic acid, kelp meal and molasses brew (sounds delicious) improves our dahlias' ability to take in nutrients and resist pests / disease. More on that below!
Pests & Disease
Organic gardening is much more fun when you stay on the offense! We take a preventative approach when it comes to pests and disease with our soil care, focus on biodiversity to increase beneficial insect populations and our comfrey tea applications.
These practices help produce thriving plants that have higher Brix values (Brix is a measure of sugar content in the sap). The higher the Brix value, the healthier and more pest and disease resistant the crop.
If we ever have insect populations that become problematic and out of balance, we spray infested plants with horticultural oil (early morning or late at night to avoid spraying beneficial insects).
And finally, we cull and dispose of plants that show signs of disease or that fail to thrive and use strict harvesting sanitation practices when harvesting blooms and diving tubers.
Weeding
To naturally combat weeds and add organic matter to our soil, we rely heavily on straw mulch and trailing nasturtium to cover the soil. For weeds that push through, we hand weed only. Our dahlias are never sprayed with toxic herbicides.