These will soon be rooted up and well on their way to being full plants

Get out the scalpel

Damn these buggers grow fast! Less than a week after we put the tubers on the benches and they'd already started to throw off new shoots so it was time for Barry to get his scalpel out. Different people grow dahlias in different ways. Some, like The Mighty V, just leave the tubers in the ground and let them regrow ( if they survive ) the next year, but the plants start looking crap by the third year, so I'm always replacing them with fresh ones. Others, mainly the yanks I believe, split the tubers into individual "chicken legs" and then plant each of them up, which allows them to get about 1/2 dozen or so off each parent plant. We just throw the whole tuber into a tray, water it and then take cuttings .... lots of cuttings ... from the first flush off about a dozen Trelyn tubers we've already taken 70+ cuttings, which is about all we need for this year, but we could easily get a couple of hundred more if we needed them.

When you take cuttings it's really important to to make the cut directly below a leaf joint as this is where next years cuttings will come from, assuming you want to take cuttings next year of course but we always do. They're easy enough to root up, if you have some rooting powder then just dip them in that and them slap them in some seed compost. If you haven't got any rooting powder then just slap them in some seed compost. If you haven't got any seed compost then just slap them in some compost ... as I said, it's real easy ... then stand welllllllllllllll back, because these buggers grow like there's no tomorrow.

Each of the trays holds 77 cuttings, so we're about half way there

The greenhouses

The large greenhouse is now cleared, so during this week I'll be rotovating it ready for sterilising the beds next week. Then I'll be doing the same in the small greenhouse which means that I need to get all my seedlings hardened off ready to move into the top end of the large greenhouse so that they don't get killed as well. It's taking me a fair tad longer this year than normal as I've been a smidge ill for the last few weeks and haven't really had the energy needed, but we seem to be winning so far. I'll also be dropping the sides on the large greenhouse to help keep the warmth in and the wind out as the sterilising agent needs the soil to be over 10°C before it's active ... cool, I'll be in my shorts in no time

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We finally started!

We finally got round to sparking off the dahlia tubers this week although, like everything else to do with the dahlias this year, we're a fair tad behind as some of them should have been started a month ago. Unlike growing veg, or non-show flowers, this may come back to bite us on the arse as everything about their life cycle is strictly timed and we may have just irreparably screwed up that timetable, it pretty much comes down to how fast they start to throw cuttings. With a tad of luck everything will work itself out in the long run but if it doesn't then it's not the end of the world as we're less interested in showing this year due to other time constraints, so it's mainly about preserving our varieties. The fact that this is also our last year as world champions, and we have no hope of defending our title as they're being held in Canada this year, doesn't really help I guess.

And they're off!

I've been around dahlias for years, so I *know* how much they can change from day to day .. hell, sometimes you feel that if you sat there quietly enough then you could actually watch them grow ..... but the speed that the tubers have started throwing shoots is pretty impressive to say the least! We've only had the tubers on the beds for a week and already the majority of them are throwing shoots, even the mary's and bryn's which are normally a tad on the lethargic side when it comes to recognising that it's a new year.

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We don't normally enter!

Yeah, it's showtime! Usually we don't have enough flowers to enter the Southport Flower Show as the majority of our blooms are timed to come out the week later when all the serious championship events take place, but this year all the shows are in a very brief period, the majority of the ones that we enter are done and dusted 3 weeks from now! So, we went to Southport with a few blooms ... and trounced them .... I can't wait until they realise that Barry thought we had some right crap flowers ( the first ones usually are ) and that we should have far better for the rest of the shows .... maybe they should just all give up now?

As usual Barry and Wendy set off with a van full of flowers and came back with a van full of trophies. Of course the only reason that we ever win is to down to my dedication to bimbling and absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they actually know one end off a flower from the other. Such is the burden I must bear Of course the fact that we're into the showing season means that the large and samll greenhouses are now filled with some fantastic dahlias .... several of which are planted in the wrong spot, glad I'm not the one that labels the cuttings! ... The downside is, it hasn't really been sunny enough to truly appreciate the time that I spend with them every day. Whilst they cheer up even the most grim day, they really look there best when the suns shining and your sat amongst them with a beer and a smoke, reading a good book .... of course you have to get up every now and then to turn the next irrigation system on ... but it's worth the hardship

Our next show is tomorrow, Barry's picking our entries as I'm typing this, but I'll get some pics before he sets off. I'll also be able to update you with the show pictures a lot sooner as well, as this show is our own Societies show and is being held in Lancaster, which is just up the road from here. For now you'll just have to drool over last weeks flowers

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It's the most used icon on our weather maps

I've not made a post for ages because I've been busy recoding my gallery plugin to make the whole process shedloads less manual and a lot more idiot friendly ... although I'm currently the only idiot using it ... I've also had the ballache of recoding the demo magento skin to make it work with the release version of the software .... ah well, at least it'll be a very custom skin I suppose .... anyway, enough about coding, this post is meant to be about the field.

As usual we've had a fair amount of mixed weather, about all we haven't had is hail, thank god it's summer huh? Whilst rain isn't exactly my idea of perfect shorts weather, hell it's not even my idea of "go outside" weather, at least it put our new drainage system to the test ... it passed with flying colours ... in fact, all of the beds are in pretty good nick this year. Anyway, seeing as I had to go water the beds that were already under cover, I decided to nick Gary's camera and take a few pics.

Wow! a ball of fire in the sky!

In all fairness to the weather, the sun has *almost* managed to fulfil it's contractual duties of 12 hours of sunshine for summer ... of course, we hoped it'd do it all in one day, not spread it over several weeks :-S. Ahhh well, at least I got some good photos that didn't involve water

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At last the shorts come out

Once again May arrived on time this year and it was time to slap on the shorts and drag the trusty old rotavator kicking and screaming out of it's winter hide away. A swift tankful of petrol later and it was a much happier bunny and almost looking forward to playing in the soil. We had a lot to do in a very short space of time this year as everything was running a tad behind schedule due to one thing and another. This basically meant that we had 8 afternoons to rotavate and stake out both greenhouses so that we could slap 600+ plants in the ground. So, without further delay, I fired up the rotavator and started meandering along flower beds.

This year we'd once again sterilised the beds to keep the weeds at bay, something that we didn't do last year, and regretted when the rains came ... and stayed for a while ... it ended up being to wet to pull the weeds out, without dragging out huge clods of soil, and the blanket of weeds kept the beds wet and stopped them drying out ... rock and a hard place springs to mind ... so this year we decided to kill the buggers before they got beyond the "I'm a seed" stage ... unfortunately this meant that all the beds needed an extra rotavation to make sure that the soil was turned over and the sterilising agent dispersed, we don't want to kill the plants before we even get going

A few days later

After several days and a few passes of the rotavator the beds are pretty much ready for staking out so that we can plant up. A few years ago Barry decided that he should knock all the stakes in as I'm incapable of knocking in any of the 600+ stakes in an upright manner ... I've done my best to make sure he continues with that decision ... so a tad later, with a knackered Barry stood beside me, we're looking at 12 beds fully staked up and ready for the plants ... it's a good moment ... especially since I'm not the knackered muppet

The next day started early ... 11^am is very early for me to be dragged off a pc huh? ... and was basically a production line involving Barry wheeling barrow loads of plants from the small greenhouse, where they'd been waiting patiently, and putting one by every stake. I got the job of shuffling along on my arse, in just my shorts, planting each one in it's new home, you should see how fast they'll grow now that they're in the soil. Eventually all the plants had been brought in and slapped by the stake that was gonna be their support for the next few months, so Barry started to help me plant up the last couple of beds. I gave Barry the glory of planting the last plant in the large greenhouse ... not because I'm generous, but because he finished his side of the row slower than me, he's getting on a tad huh?

From nothing to planted in 1 day

After the large greenhouse the small greenhouse is a doddle, it only holds about 120 plants so with a tad of effort it can be prepped up, rotavated and planted all in the same day ... unfortunately this time I'm the muppet that has to make the effort. The rotavator lept through the beds happily, knowing that it was one of the last times it would be used and could soon go back to it's winter home and sleep for the rest of the year. In next to no time the 3 beds were ready for the stakes to go in ... time to go remind Barry how crap I am at knocking them in straight ... thankfully he once again agrees with me.

It wasn't long before we were standing back and looking at a fully planted up small greenhouse. It's a good job really because he was off for a weeks holiday in a couple of hours time and Wendy would have killed him if it had been delayed. Now all that was left was for me to rescue our veg patch so that the rotavator could head off for its much needed rest until next year, but that's another story and another post ... for now we were just happy to finally see all of the plants in the ground as they're far happier when they get out of their pots and everything is much easier to water ... made even easier by the fact that we have an irrigation system in both greenhouses, although you still need to hand water to ensure that each plant gets enough without drowning them all.

With all that done I meandered off to console a lonely looking crate of beer. It seemed to cheer up when I offered to take it out to sit in the sun for a quiet evening

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I'm blonde, not stupid Here's me pretending to have dug the trenches

It's bloody cold in January

Our season began bloody early this year, I'd just about recovered from celebrating the new year when we started! After last years problems with the weather, when we almost lost a hundred or so plants due to the fact that it pissed it down for so long that people started buying plans for wooden boats and searching for pairs of animals that they liked. This year we were taking no chances and decided that we'd slap in a spanking new drainage system for the top beds. When I say "we" I mean the royal we, Barry just sat on his arse in a nice warm room playing with google Did I mention it was cold? Seriously, I had to wear a jumper that was thicker than a redneck convention.

We started off with a trench that extended almost the full length of the large greenhouse, thankfully I wasn't the one who had to dig it. It ran from the existing drainage system, which is about a quarter of the way up, all the way to the very top of the greenhouse. Each of the other three top beds also had trenches dug along there full length, we're not taking any chances, and all four were connected by a cross trench. Did I mention that I'm glad that I wasn't the muppet that had to dig them? It looks like a lot of work, although the guy who dug them managed it in a long morning!

You wouldn't believe this was buried a few years ago

Now it's my turn

So, in I bimbled, shivering my poor nuts off, on a very cold January day, to find all our flower beds sitting on the paths and looking in a smidge of a sorry state. It's a tad weird looking at them from the under side. There was also a huge mound of stones and a coil of pipe lurking maliciously in the corner next to the wheel barrow and shovel ... so I went into the office to see Gary and grab a coffee, I'm not a cold weather person .... if it can't be done in shorts then it should be done by someone else huh? .... several coffees later, none with brandy in .. the stingy sod .... I gritted my teeth and stepped out into the cold .... after several days of acclimatising myself to the weather in this manner I started on the task of turning all the pipe, stones and soil into flower beds with a drainage system.

The first thing to do was to slap a thin layer of stones in all the trenches for the pipe to sit on, eventually it'll be wrapped in stones to stop soil clogging it up. It was interesting to see the exposed cross-section of the existing drainage system as you could see just how effective the stones were at keeping the soil away from the pipe, they looked as clean as the day that we ... that'd be the royal "we" again ... put the system in a couple of years ago. With that done I decided that enough was enough and meandered off to find a warm place and a crate of beer ... Eventually I ran out of beer so I had no excuse to not go and play with a hacksaw and some blue pipe.

Take one spade, a huge length of pipe and a bloody big pile of clay and soil

The pie eyed piper

Once the layer of stones was in .... and the beer finished .... it was time to start cutting the pipe to length and joining all the various sections together. The most important joint being the junction between the old and the new as it's pretty pointless draining all the beds and giving the resulting water no place to go ... kinda defeats the object. Although this was a simple task ... I'm blonde, I only do simple ... it's a smidge time consuming and playing with a hacksaw with frozen hands is not my idea of a fun day. Luckily the only arteries I cut we're all to do with drainage system. At this point I called it a day again, I used the excuse that it goes dark early, and once again went to hunt out a warm place and a crate of beer.

The next task involved a wheel barrow, a shovel, a few tons of stone and a lot of man power .... all provided by one man ..... As all of the pipework needed to be surrounded in a cosy coat of stones ... they're cosy to a pipe .... as I mentioned earlier, these act as a kind of filter and stop the soil from clogging the holes in the pipe, if you forget them then you might as well not bother digging the hole in the first place ... not that I dug the hole of course, but you get the point ... It gets pretty boring filling a barrow with stones and meandering it the length of the field, just to empty it into a hole, and then start again ... so once again I blamed the lack of sunshine and went to see if there was any beer left in the crate that was sat in a nice snug room at home.

It's a little weird seeing our irrigation system floating above our drainage system

Putting the beds back

At last the pile of stones was lower than a snakes neck tie and all of the pipes were covered with a good layer, so it was time to start putting the flower beds back where they were expected to be. This was a smidge easier than playing with the stones because at least the soil was beside the holes that it was expected to be in. However, when you're talking tons of soil, I shudder to think of just how many tons, there is no such thing as "an easy day". Once again it was just a matter of grunt work with a shovel and was more boring than watching England play cricket with ... well, just about anybody ... although the end result would be faster. Eventually all the soil was back where it was before we started and I was able to see the paths again for the first time in many a week, so I took my aching and frozen body off to accost a crate of beer.

Was it worth it?

So far the system seems to be performing as expected but until we take the roofs off the greenhouse, and have a bout of torrential rain, it's a bit hard to judge. I do know that the beds were in a far better state when we came to prepping them up ready for planting, but that's another story and another post We're pretty confident that we won't have any problems with them flooding like they did last year, of course this now means that we'll have problems keeping them watered enough for the plants to grow, but it's easier to turn a tap on than it is to turn the weather off huh? ... anyway, I've just spotted a lonely looking crate of beer so I think I'll just go keep it company.

Have fun
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