September 26, 2023 Dahlia Tour

There wasn’t a business meeting this month. Our Program was a tour of a dahlia garden at the residence of a local home gardener.

LAGC members met at the home of Amy Krut in West View to see her unique garden.  She has been growing dahlias for 12 years and has transformed her front yard and side yard along Rochester Road into a beautiful garden of dahlias. Amy plants many of the tubers in the ground, but also grows more than 70 in 5 gallon fabric pots which completely cover her lawn.  She loves the blooming flowers for their variety of colors and shapes.  She is also fortunate to be able to sell her flowers to 2 florists.

Amy said that her love of flowers came from her father and she grows a memory garden to remember him, as well as other important people, that have passed on.

The garden is usually in bloom from mid-August to mid-October with a variety of colors.  During our visit we saw blooms of pink, purple, orange, red, yellow and many shades in between.

Amy said that the task of planting all her dahlias begins in mid-February. She pots them up to start growing early and keeps them on storage shelves that she can roll in and out of her garage on days that are warm from the sun.  Dahlias have to wait until after the last frost before they can be planted in the ground.

A large part of growing dahlias is saving the tubers for next season.  Amy has been working to perfect her process over the years so she can save as many varieties as possible. She explained that at the end of the season she lets the foliage die back after a hard frost and then removes it.  The tubers remain in the ground or pot for 2 weeks with the hope that an eye will grow.  Then the tubers are dug up and dried for a few days, labeled and stored in peat moss. 

We enjoyed walking thru Amy Krut’s dahlia garden and seeing her passion for one specific flower. I’m hoping to apply some of the tips I learned about growing dahlias to the few plants that I grow.

Tour notes by Colleen Fingal, pictures by Dianne Machesney and Bill Goff.

Not a dahlia?