Farewell to Dahlias
We’ve been feeling very lucky with the recent weather – mild temperatures and a bit of rain, though plenty of wind as ever on our flat fields here in Cambridgeshire! The mildness does mean we’re seeing a lot of aphids, but it’s also brought us extra time to prepare for winter, finish projects, and reflect on the season’s successes.
Our winter salads are thriving and the tunnels are bursting with gorgeous pak choi, tatsoi, baby leaf mustards, rainbow chard, lettuce, winter parsley, thyme, and more. We only have a few tunnels left to flip as we take out the last of the peppers and chillies.
Once that’s done, attention turns to maintenance: two of our original tunnels are ready to be re-skinned after last winter’s storm damage, and two more Spanish tunnels just need their skins tightened. With those jobs complete, new doors in place, and a few finishing touches, we’ll be fully ready to hunker down for the colder months ahead.
One of our colder month projects is reviewing the dahlias. Anna, who looked after the flowers so beautifully this year, has moved on but left us fantastic notes on which varieties performed well. This week, we’re carefully labelling each plant just above the soil line so we can identify every tuber once the plants die back.
We’ll be keeping many favourites, moving others to the pick-your-own flower field in spring, and making sure everything is thoroughly mulched and protected. We’re not lifting the tubers this year – instead, we’re leaving them in place and mulching deeply to guard against frost. Local friends and farmers are warning that this winter could be particularly harsh, so we’re taking every precaution to keep the plants safe.
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