Hello and thanks for joining us for another episode of Mid American gardener.

I'm your host, Tinisha Spain, and this week, we are at delight flower farm and happy fall with fall comes time to dig up those tender perennials and get ready to store them for the winter.

So we're going to show you how to do that, and we're going to show you a really cool craft idea to display some of those marigolds that are in full bloom right now.

So let's find Maggie and get started.

And we have found Maggie here in the dahlias.

So we've been here three times now.

Thanks for letting us come back.

Thanks for coming back.

We've hit almost every season.

So for those who may not know, you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about delight and who you are and how long you've been in business.

Yeah.

My name is Maggie Taylor, and I'm the owner of delight flower farm, which is where we are right now.

We are a commercial cut flower farm, so we don't sell a lot of landscaping plants.

We mostly just sell the flowers after they're cut to florists and grocery stores and at the farmers market.

And we are woman owned, but we also have all women crew this season on the farm, which is pretty unique.

And this is one of our most popular crops that we sell, one of our most popular flowers.

What is it about dahlias that people love?

What do you think?

I think the kind of shape and the texture, there's so many petals, some of them almost make an entire ball shape where the petals are touching themselves in the back.

I think another reason why they're popular with florists is because they are very fragile and they don't ship well, and most flowers are imported.

So because dahlias don't ship very well, they don't hold up, it's really hard for florists to get them.

So locally this we're a great resource for getting them.

Okay?

And as I said, we're in fall now, but there's still some work to be done in the garden, and so we're getting a little ahead of ourselves.

So talk about what we're going to be doing.

This typically would be done, you said, after a killing frost, yeah.

So it's kind of the dreaded task we you know, I just said dahlias are really popular and people love them, but we call them the Divas of the farm.

They're a lot of work.

They require a lot of attention a lot of the time.

We're kind of cussing them under our breath.

But then when they bloom, they're so beautiful, but then we start, you know, cussing them again, because it requires in order to save the tubers, and that's how the plant reproduces and makes more of itself.

We have to dig them after the frost.

So usually it's pretty cold, sometimes it's rainy and wet, and they're heavy and cumbersome, and it's a time intensive, laborious process.

So today we're going to show that, because as a home gardener, you probably don't have 2000 to dig.

So maybe I can make the prospect a little bit less intimidating, but you do.

We're doing this early so that you prepare yourself and you get ready.

So you will have to imagine that it's frosted.

And when it's frosted, most of this green foliage turns black.

It looks very goth, and you might think they're dead, but waiting until it frosts is really the perfect time to dig, because it hardens up that tuber, kind of like a potato, will store better if it has a little bit harder, thicker skin on it, same with Dahlia tubers.

So we're breaking the rules just for TV sake, just for educational purposes.

We're breaking the rules a little bit.

Yeah, I will say we're also breaking the rules, because, like, I was just saying to you before we started filming, we are going to try harvesting some of these tubers with a tractor this year.

So because we sell our tubers, it's really important that we get the variety correct, because you can't tell what kind of flower it is from the tuber alone.

So when it's blooming, that's when you want to mark it and and identify it, what variety it is, and in our case, remove the ones that don't fit in the rest of the bed, so you can kind of, yeah, it sticks out like a sore thumb here.

Yeah, you can see this orange plant here is Sylvia, and there's another orange plant here, Sylvia, but the whole rest of this 100 foot bed is sweet Natalie.

Is this blush variety.

So we want to make sure when we're selling the sweet Natalie tubers, then we're not accidentally selling a Sylvia for someone.

So okay, most important thing before it frost, which is why we're we're showing you this now is that you'll want to mark your tuber.

So we usually write with a sharpie on this flagging tape, which you can get at any hardware store.

And it's weather resistant and really helpful, or you could use, you know, like a different like a plant tag or a label.

We just use these wooden ones.

Gotcha.

Yeah, so you can see, you might be able to zoom in a little bit here, or Tanisha.

You can see that we've marked this as Sylvia here.

We just tie it around the base of the plant, so we know, even after the frost, when they don't have any more blooms on them, we know what variety this is, and it's really helpful for keeping track of things.

So when you are digging these, let's say, let's say the Frost has happened before you dig, first step is removing the stems.

Is that what you're gonna do?

Yep.

So we cut off the stems.

If your plant is small or shorter, or it's in a pot, you might be able to just use like pruners and cut it off at the base.

I'm actually going to save that flower.

But if you have a lot of them, or your plants are quite big, like these are, you might have some sort of support around them.

So you can see these ones behind us have this hornova netting.

I just removed that from here, so it's a little easier to access the plant, and you can use loppers, which is maybe a little bit easier, and you can just a little less bending and squatting, whatever makes the job easier.

Yeah.

So then you don't have, you know, any of that to contend with anymore.

But actually, we have this stump that's left behind, which makes for kind of a nice handle.

If this goes right, we'll see now.

Question, if you are a beginner, and this is maybe your first year growing these, can you talk a little bit about why they have to be pulled?

Yes.

Okay, so most plants reproduce a variety of ways.

You can they make seed, or you can make cuttings.

There's, you know, different ways to make more of a plant.

A Dahlia will also make seed, but because it's cross pollinated, it won't be genetically true to the variety that's growing.

So if you want an exact replica of the dahlia that you grew.

Like let's say you really like it.

You want to grow more of that variety.

You want to gift some to your friends next year.

Whatever it is you want to dig those tubers, because it's going to be an exact copy of that variety.

It's going to stay genetically true in our climate, which were zone six, you know, still, I think depending on the week, right?

Yes, they won't, if they're not, if they're uncovered and they're just in the bare ground, they will freeze after once the ground, the soil itself actually freezes, and it will kind of melt the tuber and turn it to mush.

So good stay.

We have experimented with overwintering in the ground, which we've had about 85% success rate.

So that's great.

If you watch this and you're like, I'm not gonna dig.

It's not for me.

There are some things that you can do.

We actually have a tutorial on our website that goes through step by step of how you could overwinter in the ground, but the basics are that you would do really thick mulch and then some sort of plastic to keep it from getting wet and to keep it warm over the winter.

Okay, so there is an A no dig option.

There is Yeah, still, still has some labor to it, yes, yeah, yeah, but it's much easier than the digging process.

Okay, okay, so typically in the garden, when we dig plants, we think about using a shovel, and you could use a shovel if that's all you've got, but because we can't see, we don't really know the shape or how much space these tubers are taking up underground, I don't recommend using a shovel, because you're likely to slice the tubers, and if You cut the tuber, which I know we talked in our episode in the late winter or late fall last year about dividing tubers and how you make more of them, it needs an eye, a neck and a body.

And if we slice it, it might not have some of its full anatomy.

So and what you put in in the spring is not going to look the same when you harvest in the fall or when you dig them, or you hope anyway, yeah, so they've put on some usually we put in like one tuber, but we'll see.

I don't know, I haven't dug this yet.

We'll see if there's three or four tubers in here.

Sometimes I've gotten up to 20 tubers off of one tuber in a growing season, so that's another reason why you might want to dig, because you get more.

We all want more.

Yes, okay, the moment of truth.

Yeah.

So we start a little ways away from the plant, not right up next to it, and the ground is pretty dry, since we haven't gotten rain, and so I'm just going to go and kind of loosen that soil a little bit, and I'm going to step around and do it on pretty much three sides of the plant.

So imagine doing this 2000 times.

I hope the tractor works for you this year.

I really do me too.

And you can see the stem is kind of starting to move a little bit, which.

Is a good sign.

It means it's loose.

This is a part where we will we do really kind of want to be gentle so that we're not breaking off that tuber.

So these really are divas, aren't they?

Yes, so we'll clear off some of that topsoil.

Let's see, oh, what we've got under here.

Okay, so it's tempting to shake it or beat it off the ground, to get all the dirt off of it, but like I said, this neck kind of can easily break, so we're just going to carefully pull off some of this dirt.

So tell me when you planted it.

Give me an example of the size of the tuber that went in the ground in the spring.

Yeah.

So actually, you can kind of see, this is the mother tuber.

And you can see, because the skin, you can feel it, Tanisha, if you want, is like a little bit more rough, and this is a little bit more tender and soft.

You can even see it's got some swelling from like, moisture, where it's storing some moisture.

It looks like I did break off one tuber.

Possibility, which will happen.

That's okay, but all these other ones are new.

So we had this one that we planted, and if we're good at dividing, we'll have, you know, a second, second one here, maybe a third one, maybe a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth.

Okay, so we maybe have eight more potential Dahlia plants for next season off of this one tuber that makes it super cost effective to dig them and see what's going on.

Yeah, absolutely.

And in the dividing process, probably some of these we'll find don't have an eye or aren't viable.

But you know, even if we get three off of this, it's still worth it, especially because most Dahlia tubers retail for about seven to $20 per tuber.

Wow.

So you can really, you know, in a few years, have quite a collection, sure, just from saving your own tubers.

Can you point out an eye, a neck, and what was the other one?

The body?

The body can, yeah, point those out so those can see.

Do you mind handing me those pruners there?

Thank you.

So something to think about as you're digging is deciding whether you have more time to divide your Dahlia tubers in the fall, which you can do.

You could do this process right now and store it.

You can either store it in vermiculite or peat moss, or there's a few other ways to store it.

And you want to store it about 40 to 50 degrees, not too cold, or it'll freeze not too hot, or it'll still start to grow in its active growth, not too moist, or it'll rot, not too dry, or it'll dry up.

So if you are going to divide in the fall, which is actually usually when we divide, you would cut the the top off of it.

Once you you've, you know, set aside that variety, and then you kind of cut into the actual clump itself.

And this is where you might damage, you know, some of them, because we're just trying to make this a little bit more easier to do.

You can hose these off, which is a great thing to do, because then you can see a little bit clearer.

So let's just see if we can see of these three.

Okay, this might be a little bit hard to see, but let's see if I can set it on a surface that you can see a little bit better.

So this is its body, which is that tuber.

It doesn't matter if it's small, if it's round, if it's long, some varieties will be really big and kind of round and bubbly, and some will be long and skinny.

They're all good, no matter the size.

This is the neck right here, where it kind of shortens a little bit and narrows, got it.

And then and then the eye is really hard to see.

But an eye is like a little, that's probably more same thing on a potato, yeah, like a little raised up bump.

And so this one is intact, even though, you know, it might have some a little, the tiny, little spindly roots broken off of it.

That doesn't matter, this one is fully intact, so that's what you're looking for.

This is it.

And we would let this air out for a couple of days, just so that the moisture that it's holding onto kind of dries off and the skin hardens up a little bit, toughens it up for storage.

And then we would go ahead and put this in vermiculite, in a Tupperware container with a label.

Again, you can tell we've made mistakes with labeling, so it's kind of triggering for me.

And then we would store it.

We store it, we actually turn our flower cooler into our winter Dahlia tour store.

Hit that sweet spot with the temperature, put a little mini space heater in there.

That is on a thermostat.

So it'll kick on if it drops below 40 degrees, but it won't get it too hot in there.

But you could use your garage or a basement, as long as it's not too cold, not too hot, not too wet, not too dry for these divas.

Got it, and that's the process, excellent.

Okay, you now you told us you planted a lot of these.

Does that mean you have a lot of different varieties as well?

I see a lot of different colors, and so tell us a little bit about Yeah.

So dahlias.

I think there's hundreds of 1000s of varieties.

And like I said, when you collect seed, you can make a genetically unique variety, just because of the pollination, you can go through the process of getting it patented and registered with a name.

So it can be kind of overwhelming to decide what varieties are you going to grow.

We stick to the type, which is called the ball variety.

So you can kind of see this one right here.

Behind us is Cornell, and it's a kind of silvery red, but it's called a ball one because it has that very round shape with lots of petals.

And we choose ball varieties because they last longer in the vase.

But there are dinner plate dahlias that can be like eight inches across.

There are cactus dahlias, which have really skinny, little thin petals.

There's all different styles and types of dahlias, and within those shapes, there's also a lot of varieties.

So we actually only grow about 10 varieties, but 2000 plants.

So each of these beds has about 200 plants in it, and we try to follow colors that are popular with our florists and with our customers, colors that people like.

Since we have the U of I here, we do grow a lot of orange flowers.

So that one that we dug up was Sylvia, and we do have several rows of Sylvia.

Actually beautiful.

Do you have a favorite?

I know it's kind of hard to pick.

It's definitely hard.

But I this year, I'm really liking this brown sugar.

And it has it's not kind of a tacky or harsh red.

It's very beautiful with, like, a little bit of gold and yellow in it.

And earlier in the season, it's a little bit brighter, and it's become a little bit more subtle as the season goes on, let's look at some other kinds.

These are beautiful too.

What varieties are these?

So this pink variety is called Pink Sylvia.

And then this one over here, which you can see the bugs are starting to attack, is called Sweet Natalie.

And this is one of our more popular varieties for wedding flowers, because you can see it's that kind of elegant blush color.

I will say you can see that some of these, I'm just going to pop this head off, have a lot of bug damage.

I was going to ask you about that.

Are they?

What are they susceptible to?

Lunches on these?

So especially this time of year, cucumber beetles.

When all the corn and soybeans around us get harvested, the cucumber beetles come over here for like an all you can eat Dahlia buffet.

So it's really hard to keep up with the pest damage.

They also have some borers.

We have found that the best way to stave off the borers that get in the stem and suck the juice out of the plant, is to apply beneficial nematodes in the spring, when we're planting them, they're also heavy feeders, so we give them a lot of nitrogen in spring and then taper off that in summer and fall, so that they start blooming.

I did, you know, we're on a commercial scale, so we typically try to deadhead the ones that have bug damage.

Sometimes we will spray an organic pesticide if we're having a lot of pressure.

But for the home gardener, an organic practice that you can use is this is an organza bag, like a gift bag, that you get jewelry or soap in.

And you can actually just bag your buds before they bloom like that, it allows light and rain to get into them and for them to have space to open, but the bugs can't get to them, and that's a good way to protect them from bug damage.

Very nice, very nice.

Some of the panelists on our show say that if you are feeding the plants and then they're able to kind of fight off the insects.

Is that?

There's truth to that?

Yeah, I think the healthier the plant is, the more resilient it is to disease or to pests.

When we plant these with the tubers and the spring, and maybe you'll come back for planting time next year, we add a mixture of bone meal and we also add gypsum, which provides some calcium, so that their stems get really sturdy.

You can see their blooms get heavy, and they're big plants, so they need staking, but they need less staking if they have good calcium, because they're strong like they like us, they have strong bones or strong stems.

So we add a little bit of those amendments, the bone meal and the gypsum.

When we plant, and then we spray foliar sprays of compost tea, fish emulsion, things like that throughout the season, just to keep them healthy and resilient.

Very nice.

Now, how did that dry summer, this dry summer?

How did that have any effect other than kind of making them maybe a little weakened and unable to defend themselves against pests?

But as far as growing and blooming, did the dry summer have any effect on them at all?

I don't think so.

Other than me having to water a lot more than I normally would, because they like about an inch of water a week, so that's a lot of irrigation.

But no, they seem to like the heat.

They like it when it gets cool at night and hot during the day.

So this is their time.

Oh, man, yeah, I was going to say they had a great summer, wonderful.

Okay, any other varieties you'd like to show off?

Yeah?

So these silvias are nice because they're like a lavender pink, almost as they start to bloom, they're used in a lot of wedding work, quite popular.

You can kind of see, we just harvested that bed this morning, so there's less blooms there.

But those are the not the pink Sylvia.

They're the original Sylvia that is that nice orange color.

And even between these two varieties that we're walking you can see that the here, you can see that the sweet Natalie has kind of like a rounded petal presentation, and it's a little bit more of a flat face, like, here's a good example.

But this Sylvia has more of like a pointed petal presentation, and it's a much tighter so it's just kind of a different look.

Wow.

I thought I had a cool job.

You have the coolest job.

Now another flower that I noticed when we walked up that you guys are really picking right now the marigolds.

And you know, sometimes they don't get the credit they deserve, but you've got some really great marigold facts that I would love to get into.

So can we go over and look at those?

Absolutely you these are the flowers I think of when I think of fall.

And there we talked about this off camera.

They're kind of the underdog, right?

Like they're cheap.

You're talking about, you can get these anywhere.

Kids bring them home from school for their moms every year.

So let's talk about marigolds.

Yeah, so marigolds are actually one of my favorite flowers.

They're so bright and vibrant, but they can also be perceived as being, like a little harsh, because they are so bright, they're not that pastel or that really fragile flower like the dahlias are.

But this time of year, especially, you know, we have a lot of folks celebrate Halloween, and they are that true orange for Halloween.

There's also, for a lot of Latino cultures, there's the Day of the Dead, which marigolds have.

They're the most important flower for those altars and celebrations.

And then for a lot of people that celebrate Diwali, which is a Hindu celebration that happens late October, early November.

These are also an important and culturally significant flower for them.

So it is their time right now.

And I do think that they are an underdog.

They are aren't they?

And unlike the dahlia you said, these guys are tough.

They're tough.

They're easy to grow.

The seeds are very cheap.

They're easy to save and plant in your garden with no fuss, I guess I will say that they bloom usually in summer.

Most of the kind of you know, hardware store seed pack varieties will bloom in July and August, and they might be looking a little tired or tapered off by this time of year.

Dahlias, I mean, sorry, switching gears.

Yes, marigolds actually do have a slightly unique thing about them, in which most of the varieties are what we call day neutral, meaning they'll bloom no matter how much daylight there is.

But since we just had the Autumn Equinox, we miss we're now moving into the point of the year where the night gets longer and the days get shorter.

So there are short day varieties that will bloom in September and October, and that's the ones that we want to grow for these holidays.

Gorgeous.

These are really pretty.

And I this was just breathtaking when you brought these out for all the crafters out there.

Look at that isn't that gorgeous.

Now, what will these be used for?

Do you know these are being used for a florist that we work with for an event for the University of Illinois.

So, you know, this is one of the school's colors, so we sell a lot of marigolds, you know, throughout the growing season, for that reason.

But these are for a special event.

I'm not sure if they're gonna be hung or draped down the tables like garlands, but so pretty.

We also sell them for a lot of weddings.

We sell them at the farmers market and in our farm stand, just for anyone to enjoy in their home.

You can hang them over a doorway.

Last year, I actually decorated my Christmas tree with garlands.

America.

Ooh, because they hold their color and they dry really well.

Very nice.

I was thinking about doing that with Zinnias this year, but this I really like.

So if someone was going to make these, can you show us briefly how, just maybe how to start out?

And yeah, so you don't even have to harvest the bunches, like we harvest and sell the bunches of cut flowers here.

But if you're worried about cutting down plants in your garden, you don't need to cut the full plant down for this.

You really just need the head.

And you can kind of pop it off of the stem quite easily with your thumb and your finger.

And then we use this bamboo thread because it's biodegradable.

It doesn't have a wax coating or anything, so you could just throw it in the fire pit or the compost pile once you're done with the dried ones in your house.

And we try to standardize what we're doing, so we sell them in three foot lengths.

So if you you know you need a certain amount, I would encourage you to measure out your thread that you're using, and then these are, they're actually doll making needles.

And I found out about this through a florist that worked in Hawaii for a little while and did lays.

So they use these longer needles because it's a little easier to get the full flower through.

You know, if you use a regular needle, you might have trouble.

So it sounds like kind of harsh, but we stick it right through the middle of the bloom, and then it comes out the middle of the base there, and you would just thread it all the way down.

I've tied a little loop in the bottom of this, so that's makes it easy to hang for selling or makes it easy to hang on a nail in your house.

And so you just would do that same thing, no matter if it's a small bloom or a large bloom.

Yeah, you could do cool color patterns.

Yes, you certainly could.

And the fluffy ones, I will say, are the most.

If it misses the center, you just kind of reset it up.

But yeah, the fluffiest ones are the best for the show on the chains.

We call them marigold chains.

Marigold chains.

I love that.

Wow.

What a great day.

I learned so much about dahlias, and now I'm definitely gonna be trying this.

I grew pot marigolds for the first time this year, and they turned out really pretty despite how dry it was.

So yeah, my wheels are turning now.

So thank you so much for letting us come out.

Thank you.

We'll have to come back, because the only season we haven't hit is spring.

So maybe when you're putting the 2000 plus dahlias back out, we can pop out then and see, yeah, it's beautiful in spring, because we have our Ranunculus in bloom and the greenhouses, and this year we're planting 25,000 tulips.

Wow.

Okay, so that would be beautiful.

Well, thank you so much.

And before we go, you have a sale coming up so folks can get their hands on some of these dahlias.

That's really cool.

So tell us about that.

Yeah.

So actually, at this full bulb sale, it is October 10 here on the farm, we'll have a food truck and other artists and vendors and drinks, and it's open to the public, which we don't normally open our farm to the public, so that's special, but that's when we sell fall planted things.

So we actually don't sell Dahlia tubers at this sale, because they get planted in spring.

Gotcha.

But we sell like daffodil bulbs and so many unique varieties of tulip bulbs and a few other perennials that you can plant in the fall.

And then we also sell seeds for people that like to daydream about their garden in the winter.

Yes, so the ones that we'll be buying from you at this sale, those, you'll want to get those in the ground now and get them ready so that you can enjoy them next spring, right?

Yes, absolutely.

It's kind of counterintuitive.

If you don't garden a lot, you wouldn't think, you know, you think about tulips in spring, like I just mentioned, but you actually have to plant them in the fall, and they need about 10 to 16 weeks of cold temps in order to make long stems and bloom.

Awesome.

Okay, always a pleasure.

Thank you so much.

Letting us come out.

We appreciate it.

You and that is the show for this week.

Another big thank you to Maggie and her team for allowing us to come out and teaching us all about dahlias and how you can do some crafting with those marigolds.

If you've got questions for us, send them in to your garden@gmail.com or you can look us up on socials.

Thanks so much for watching, and we'll See you next time.

Good night You.

You.