At night, the winter drizzle fluttered under the oil lamps of flower farmers working to catch worms. There are green caterpillars, gray caterpillars and multi-colored caterpillars… in just one night they can eat a dahlia bud like crazy. Flower growers put so much effort into fertilizing their plants, but if they don’t carefully use oil lamps to catch worms, they will be lost forever. Growing dahlias is more labor intensive than daisies or gladiolus.

Before that, at the end of the 10th lunar month, dahlia tubers with oval shapes like duck eggs were taken from the kitchen platform and planted in a small square of land in the garden. The young shoots quickly sprouted, so that in just about a month, they could be cut off to plant in pots or plant each row of dahlias around the yard.

When growing dahlias, you must fertilize with manure and add a layer of rotten straw to the ground to compost the roots. The flower growers in my village say that for dahlias to grow well, the roots must be warm enough. Once the plant has been warmed up, no matter how cold it rains, the dahlias will still confidently grow their branches and sprout leaves.

Phi Tan

When growing dahlias, you also need to know the time of the plant to press the top so that the plant can split into many branches. Then, when the branches are about the size of the palm of your hand, you must install a bamboo pole to support the flower branches to make them sturdy in the wind and rain…

I still remember when in my village there were only two species of dahlias, red and white. Red dahlias produce many flowers and are easy to grow. White dahlias produce fewer flowers but larger flowers than red dahlias. Later, many varieties of dahlias from the city were brought back by flower growers from my hometown, from lotus-colored dahlias to bronze-colored dahlias and red-white grafted dahlias. Among them, the lotus petal dahlias are the most beautiful, from the purple to pink color of the flowers to the light, airy petals…

Southern pear

Dahlia flowers only bloom once a year in the spring, so like apricot or peach blossoms, dahlias deserve to be the messengers of spring and Tet. The small, beautiful flower buds have slow heads, incubating the winter cold in the buds to gradually grow until around the twenties of December, when they begin to open red, white buds, lotus petals… jubilantly welcoming the new sunshine and joyfully announcing it. spring comes.

How exciting it is to see the dahlias starting to put on colorful clothes on each pot to welcome spring with people. We children ran from house to house to see which house’s dahlias were the most beautiful and would bloom the most during Tet…

Pots of dahlias are a symbol of spring in our hometown. Marigold flowers are placed on the front porch, apricot flowers are placed on the table, and dahlias are solemnly placed in front of the reception table, some in several pots, otherwise one pot to celebrate Tet with people.