Ep. 101: Growing Dahlias in Texas with Robin Blood of B.Blumen Flower Farm

Everyone says dahlias need cool nights, and Robin Blood grows them in Godley, Texas, where the summer hits 105 and the grasshoppers came in like a plague her second year.

When Robin sent off her first soil sample, the lab wrote back that they did not recommend growing there, with no organic matter, no phosphorus, and a pH of 7.9. She and her husband Jeff had already stood up old telephone poles for a fence, so they stayed and built the soil instead. Today B.Blumen is a flower farm and wedding design studio serving Dallas Fort Worth, with a team of designers Robin trained herself.

In this episode you'll hear:

* How Robin shades her dahlias through a Texas summer with no trees on the property, why she lets them rest in July, and why ball varieties hold up when dinnerplates struggle

* The rabbit manure that rebuilt her soil, and how she traded labor to get it

* The second season she lost nearly every dahlia, and what it taught her about stressed plants and pests

* How a well shed turned into a design studio once she realized design made every stem she grew worth more

If you've ever been told your climate or your soil makes dahlias impossible, this conversation is for you. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode, and send this one to a grower who needs it.

About Robin

Robin Blood is the founder and creative director of B.Blumen, a flower farm and floral design studio in Godley, Texas. Her German mother called her Blumen, the German word for flowers, when she was a girl. Robin grew up in a German household with a lot of gardening, and one of her first jobs was picking snails off her mother's plants for a penny apiece.

She spent her early career in small businesses, became a director of sales at twenty, and left it all in 2020 to farm eleven acres of limestone and sand. Today B.Blumen grows without pesticides, no-till, and serves weddings across Dallas Fort Worth with a team of designers Robin trained herself.

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