Make a dahlia frame in no time
I’ve taken inspiration from a South African support to help my blooms
So far this year, I don’t think we’ve had a bad summer (at least in Sheffield). However, over the last couple of weeks it has started to turn into the typical British summer... grey and rainy!
Thankfully, most plants have had a great beginning to the season and are coming along nicely. In fact, the added rain is helping certain crops, like squash, put on a bit of weight and swell nicely.
My dahlias had started to produce lots of flowers and put on a phenomenal show of colour, so it was infuriating to find several of my ‘Le Baron’ flat on the ground due to the downpours. The combined weight of the blooms and rain made the stems snap at the base. To counter this, I’m using a method of support I saw in South Africa. You hammer three rustic stakes into the ground in a triangle around the plant, then fix wide hessian bands (strips of sacking) around them, top and bottom, to hold the plant within. The frame stops the branches bending too much and snapping, plus it looks attractive, too.
Keep picking dahlia flowers, as this helps encourage more blooms. My favourites this year, which have tolerated the weather, are ‘Kelvin Floodlight’, with its huge yellow flowers, ‘ Labyrinth’, with its flame-like blooms, and ‘ Franz Kafka’, which produces lots of small, pink pompons. They’re all available from www. sarahraven.com and www.wilko.com.
Indoor aubergines should be swelling nicely as we speak, from the more common ‘ Black Beauty’ to the big, fleshier ‘Meatball’. Don’t forget, if you’ve grown aubergines from seed, limit the plant to one to three fruits, otherwise you may not get large, ripe ones. And, if you’re growing grafted varieties, ensure the container is roomy as they don’t like to be confined (I use 20-litre buckets with holes in the bottom). You can move your plant to a larger pot now, as long as you’re careful not to knock any fruit off. After any movement or removing any fruit, give the plants a good helping of tomato feed to keep them growing. Stake heavy plants to avoid broken stems.