OUR REGENERATIVE APPROACH
Our dahlia tubers are grown on our family farm using natural, earth-minded practices. By caring for the soil, fostering biodiversity, and using preventative pest management, we nurture healthy, vigorous tubers ready to thrive in your garden.
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 focused on the long game: building healthy soil by supporting the tiny but mighty soil microbes.
Soil microbes—tiny bacteria, fungi, nematodes, and more—break down organic matter into nutrients plants can actually use, while also improving soil structure.
Since microbes can't share what they don't have, we start each season by taking a soil sample to our local county extension to have its nutrient levels tested. They email us back a report that details what macro and micro nutrients, if any, we need add to the soil to restore its balance for optimal plant health.
In addition to avoiding practices that harm soil microbes (like tilling and using synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides), we put our energy into doing things that help them thrive.
We add dried molasses to our dahlia trenches at planting time for a quick soil microbe food source (Soil microbes thrive on sugar. It’s what plants naturally feed them through their root secretions).
We support soil microbes throughout the season with a layer of straw mulch that helps retain soil moisture, prevents wide temperature fluctuations in the soil and slowly decomposes to release its nutrients.
And finally, in the off season, we nourish our dahlia beds with a thick layer of leaf mulch that protects the surface of the soil and breaks down over time to—you guessed it—feed the soil microbes.
(You can find other ways we support soil microbes are under the "Fertilizing...Or Not" section.)
Biodiversity
Along with soil care, increasing the variety of life on our farm is always top of mind. A larger variety of plants bring in a larger variety of insects which bring 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.
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, black-eyed Susan, and calendula.
Fertilizing...Or Not
This past season we experimented with an all-natural foliar spray once every two weeks (stopping one month before tuber harvest) that included humic acid, fulvic acid, kelp meal, fish emulsion, and unsulfured blackstrap molasses.
The results we noticed were promising—darker leaves, grasshoppers on and around but not chewing our dahlias, rare leaf chlorosis and limited pest issues. We'll continue this practice but this coming season will alternate between foliar spray applications (fast absorption for immediate needs) and soil drenches (slower absorption for long term soil health).
Here's the "recipe" we use on our farm per gallon of water in a backpack sprayer for now:
2 Tbsp. unsulphured blackstrap molasses
1/8 cup liquid fulvic and humic acid combo
1/4 cup liquid kelp meal
2 Tbsp. fish emulsion (stop using once see buds forming)
Word to the wise, make sure the lid to your sprayer is on TIGHT otherwise your back will be marinated in this delicious fragrance.
Another "fertilizing" practice in the making on our farm involves the use of the plant pictured to the left—comfrey.
I learned quickly on our farm in Georgia that comfrey is a farmer's best friend. It's hardy, it's fast growing, bees love it, pests don't bother it, it's easy to propagate and it GIVES BACK.
Comfrey is a biodynamic accumulator—a fancy way of saying its roots go deep into the soil, mine for nutrients and pulls them back up into its large leaves. When you chop its leaves off and scatter them on an area that needs some extra love, the leaves quickly break down and release their stored nutrients into the soil.
And because comfrey leaves grow back so quickly, you can chop and drop multiple times in a season without harming the comfrey plant. See? A farmer's best friend.
We are currently working on incorporating rows of Bocking 14 Comfrey (non-seed bearing variety) near our dahlia beds to make this fertilizing chop and drop easier. We'll keep you posted!
Pests & Disease
Organic gardening is much less frustrating when you stay on the offense! We take a preventative approach when it comes to pests and disease with our soil care practices, our focus on biodiversity to increase beneficial insect populations, and our use of the mineralizing foliar spray and comfrey leaves.
These practices help produce healthier plants that have higher BRIX values (BRIX is a measure of sugar content in the sap which indicates how well your plant is photosynthesizing). The higher the Brix value, the better your plant is photosynthesizing and therefore the healthier, and more pest and disease-resistant the crop.
It's fascinating stuff and we're all in on it. You can read more about BRIX values and how they affect plants and pests here and here.
Building soil health takes time so during this process, if we ever have insect populations that become out of balance and problematic, we get extra help from Arbico Organics' selection of beneficial insects or beneficial nematodes. As a last resort, we will spray neem oil on our dahlias in the early morning or late at night when most beneficial insects aren't active.
And finally, we cull and dispose of plants that show signs of disease or that fail to thrive (ugh...even if it's a plant that grew from a $30 tuber) and use strict harvesting sanitation practices when harvesting blooms, taking down plants at the end of the season and when dividing tubers.
Weeding
To naturally combat weeds and add organic matter to our soil, we rely heavily on straw mulch to cover the soil. For weeds that push through, we hand weed only. Our dahlias are never sprayed with toxic herbicides.