The First dahlia of 2016 and it’s a stunner! The variety is unknown as the tuber was kindly given to me by a friend who’d had a garden clear out. It’s currently residing in a pot as I’ve run out of dahlia space (there are secret plans afoot though, I just need to evict my children from part of the garden!). Currently a pot is the best place for dahlias; the slugs are worse this year than I’ve ever known. A mild winter has failed to keep their population to a manageable size; they’re decimating my dahlias that were left to overwinter in situ and munching through my squash and courgettes. It is therefore with great guilt that I have succumbed to slug pellets, sadly they have become essential. I was up at the crack of dawn after applying the dreaded lurid blue poison, collecting dead slugs before the birds got to them. I managed to fill two flower pots. It was a revolting job but it did seem to work, there have been very few slugs the following mornings and my treasured plants are looking better already. Fingers crossed using such horrid chemicals will not have impacted too much on the wildlife.