Harvesting, Cooking, And Then Eating A Dahlia Tuber
Hello friends,
Yes, I finally did it. I finally had the opportunity to try harvesting, cooking, and then eating one of my dahlia tubers.
I've been growing dahlias from seed this year as part of my dahlia breeding program, and a lot of the dahlias that flower just don't have the characteristics I'm looking for in a great seedling. Either they're single dahlias, or they have very plain and boring colours, or their flower heads are weak (and they droop), so I pull them out of the ground once I'm sure I know what sort of dahlia they are like.
I plant my dahlia seedlings very close together for spacing reasons, and when I decide that a dahlia is not what I'm looking for, that's when the dahlia seedling is pulled out of the ground, giving more space for other dahlia seedlings to grow in the garden bed.
All ornamental dahlias are edible, particularly the tubers, and their taste apparently is reminiscent of a potato crossed with celery, depending on which dahlia variety you harvest and cook. Dahlia tubers contain inulin (a prebiotic carbohydrate), other carbohydrates, have four times the amount of potassium than bananas have, and are high in fiber, making them a great food source if needed (Dahlia nutrition information (Nsabimana and Bo Jiang 2011).
With all this in mind, the next time I had to remove an unwanted dahlia seedling, I decided it was the time to try cooking and then eating a dahlia myself. The seedling dahlia donating its tubers was Dahlia SR 11, a boring single apricot dahlia variety that had flowered a few times, but its flower hadn't improved at all...
I dug the dahlia out of the ground, removed the stems and leaves, and then washed out as much dirt as possible from the tubers and roots. After bringing the root system of the dahlia into our kitchen, I cut off the small tubers the dahlia seedling had begun to grow. Small dahlia tubers we thought would be less fibrous, and more easy to cook with, compared to older and bigger tubers.
After giving the tubers another wash to remove all the dirt, I peeled the dahlia tubers as was suggested on the internet by other sources. With them now clean, I put the tubers into a small pot containing water, and added a bit of salt (similar to when boiling potatoes).
We brought the pot of water up to a boil, and let the dahlia tubers simmer for 10 minutes. At that point we tested the tubers with a knife and found them to be al dente, which was what my research suggested meant that the dahlia tubers were ready for eating. We cut one of the dahlia tubers up into thin slices and ate the slice plain...
The dahlia tuber was okay to eat, and did indeed taste like a potato crossed with celery (and it was a little earthy tasting too, a bit like beetroot). A bit plain, but okay. We sprinkled a little salt on top of the dahlia tuber slices, and it definitely improved the taste.
Wanting to explore eating the dahlia tubers further, we decided to pan fry the rest of the cooked and sliced tubers, to try out other flavor combinations with them, using ingredients we already had in the kitchen...
Here are the dahlia tuber flavor combinations we tried:
- Chilli and Garlic - Definitely more tasty than plain, the flavor was improved by sprinkling a tiny bit of salt on top to finish.
- Parmesan and Salt - Super tasty when fried plain and then sprinkled with parmesan and salt at the end.
- Basil and Olive Oil and Salt - Quite pleasant, but not as nice as the Parmesan and Salt.
- Fried in Butter with Chilli and Lemon Juice and Garlic - Definitely my favorite. The chilli and lemon and garlic combination made the dahlia tuber super tasty. We think it would've been better with lime juice instead of lemon, but we didn't have any available at the time.
With all those flavor combinations completed, we were out of dahlia tubers to eat, and that was perfectly okay for ending our experiment in dahlia cooking and eating.
I think that doing this experiment in dahlia cooking and eating was a good experience to try once. It was okay to eat, but if it came to a choice between eating potatoes and eating dahlia tubers, potatoes would be my choice every single time. If it ever came to a point that there was no choice but to eat dahlia tubers to survive (like during a zombie apocalypse), I would very happily do it, as long as I didn't need to eat any of my precious named dahlia varieties to do so. Those are sacrosanct, but they would make great seed producing dahlias, and those seeds could then go onto produce seedling dahlias tubers which I would happily to eat in the long term...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Dahlia Experiments 2025 - Growing Dahlia Seedlings
Hello friends,
As part of my dahlia growing experiments this year, one of my goals is to grow my own dahlia plants from seed. I have a stash of dahlia seed available, including the Bee's Choice dahlia variety from Floret in the USA (which I bought from Emerden last year), Beeline I and II dahlia seeds from the breeder Doctor Keith Hammett in New Zealand, dahlia seeds from Susie Ripley's garden in Dunedin, and also open pollinated seeds from my own garden.
At the end of August, once I was able to garden again after my second cataract surgery, I sowed my dahlia seeds into two covered seed trays, and sprinkled them with enough seed raising mix to cover them.
With them watered, and kept moist in the trays, the dahlia seeds stayed in our dining room in the warmth while they germinated. To my surprise, most of the dahlia seeds I planted germinated, at a rate of about 95%, which is way more dahlias than I expected to plant in my garden this year.
They grew nice and strong, and soon they were ready to transplant out into bigger pots with potting mix. They've been growing safe and sound in my glasshouse since then, growing bigger each week. My plan is to plant them in the garden after the last frost, but for now I have to figure out where I'm going to put 43 dahlia seedlings...
I can't wait to see what dahlia flowers appear from these seedlings over the summer. My plan is to be quite harsh with them, and I'll pull out any flowering plant that I'm not happy with, to give other dahlias room to grow. I'll give you updates as I go...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Side Garden Project - Planning and Building Raised Garden Beds
Hello friends,
After we had taken down the old aviary/berry cage, it was time to get to work turning this space into garden beds.
The first task was to weed the area, tidy up the fence line, and move two concrete pavers. Once I pulled out all the weeds and then tidied the fence line by putting old pieces of wood up against it for protection, hubby and I maneuvered the pavers into the space next door, where I have my worm farm located.
With all that done I ordered macrocarpa sleepers from our local garden centre for creating the new garden beds. The sleepers are 1.8 m long, which was the exact size we needed for that space.
The next step was to first put up some old trellises for our raspberry bushes, so we could train them along the fence line. We then create 90 cm wide beds using the macrocarpa sleepers, with 50 cm pathways in between for easy access to the garden beds. It was a lot of hard work considering there was a lot of river pebbles in the area. We transferred those river pebbles into the pathways between the garden beds when we were finished.
Once all the beds were in place, hubby did the hard work of digging over the garden beds and adding compost. The first bed closest to the garden shed was set aside for the strawberry plants I had put into pots in the glasshouse before the aviary was removed.
The next garden bed was set aside for my natural dyeing plants including Madder, Woad, St John's Wort, Tomentil, and Lemon Sorrel, which I had squeezed in another garden bed down the side of the house. While transferring the plants I was able to harvest some of the madder roots for natural dyeing. I have enough space leftover now to put more natural dyeing plants in the other half of the garden bed this spring.
Garden beds 3 and 4 are currently empty, and they still need to have compost added, before being prepared to a fine tilth for spring.
My plan is to grow Linen and Japanese indigo plants in bed 3: I have my own homegrown flax linen seeds in storage from last year, and I bought Japanese indigo seeds from Growing Textiles last autumn with the intention to grow my own indigo plants for natural dyeing, and also for indigo seed production.
In bed 4 I want to start my own breeding experiments with dahlias. I've wanted to do my own plant breeding for ages, and I now have the space to start this. I have dahlia seeds set aside from last year's plants to do this. I'm very excited about this project and can't wait to get started in spring.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Dahlia Profile - Lucky Number Seedlings
Hello friends,
Today we're looking at dahlia seedlings that I grew from Lucky Number dahlia seeds I harvested back in the summer of 2024.
First up we have the original Lucky Number dahlia. It's a peony dahlia with multiple rows of bright pink petals, with yellow centers. Each flower is about the width of my palm. Lucky Number gets to about 1 metre in height with bright green leaves and brown stems.
And here are the progeny of my Lucky Number dahlia.
This first one is a single dahlia with colours of peach and yellow in the petals, and a smaller flower than Lucky Number. The dahlia plant is similar in size to Lucky Number, but the stems are much darker in colour. My hunch is that this dahlia is a cross between Lucky Number and my Mystic Sparkler dahlia in the garden.
The second dahlia is pretty similar to the first dahlia, but the petal colours are a much darker pink, and there is an uneven mottling across the flower petals. The flowers are much bigger than Lucky Number in size, and I think this dahlia is a cross between Lucky Number and a red hybrid tree dahlia that grew in my garden in 2024, from seed that I purchased from NZ dahlia breeder Keith Hammett. The hybrid tree dahlia was bright red in colour with huge single flowers similar to this seedling.
The third seedling is definitely another cross between Lucky Number and the red hybrid tree dahlia. The petal colour is exactly the same as the red tree dahlia, but has rows of petals similar to Lucky Number, and the plant as a whole is similar to Lucky Number in size and colour.
And last up is a Lucky Number seedling that looks like a smaller cross of the third seedling. The flower is much smaller, and the red a bit more scarlet. I think this is also a cross with the red hybrid tree dahia.
It was an interesting experiment to grow seeds from the Lucky Number dahlia, and right now I'm unsure if I will keep any of the seedlings, as space is always at a premium in my garden. I'll make a decision in the coming weeks on what to do with these dahlias, and then tag them for digging up or keeping them once the first frost has passed.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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