Dahlia Tuber Store
Important Terms & Conditions
Please Read Before Ordering
Welcome to the beautiful world of dahlias. Please take time to carefully read the terms and conditions of our dahlia tuber sale before ordering.
Tubers, Not Potted Plants.
We are selling dahlia tubers of varieties we grow for cutting here on our farm. We are not selling a growing plant potted in soil, but a dormant or just awakening tuber that provides the energy needed to produce a new plant.
Dormant but Live Plant Material.
Tuber dormancy is broken by warming temperatures. Your tubers will arrive dormant, or just breaking dormancy. As they awake from winter storage, dahlias form “eyes” at the crown of the tuber. These eyes will produce a sprout, which will produce a dahlia plant.
Tuber Appearance.
Dahlia tubers are totally unattractive and it's miraculous that something so beautiful can come from something so ugly. Tubers come in many shapes and sizes depending on variety. Whether it's as tiny as a walnut or as gigantic as an overgrown zucchini, the only thing that a healthy tuber needs to produce a plant is an actively growing eye. From that will come large plants and stunning blooms.
Our Pledge.
We guarantee our tubers will have a minimum of one active eye, and we will provide credit or a replacement tuber (if available) for any tuber lacking an active eye. Any issues/claims with tubers must be submitted to us with supporting photographs via email to bleedingheartflowerfarm@gmail.com no later than June 1. Credits will be issued for any tuber that slips by us lacking an eye.
Online Orders Only.
Because of the busy growing/harvesting pace at our farm in springtime, we accept dahlia tuber orders via our website only. We cannot accept orders via mail, email, text, telephone or in person.
No "Reserved" Product.
Items placed in carts are not guaranteed or reserved until your purchase is completed and you have checked out and paid.
No Combined Orders, No Combined Shipping.
Once an order is placed, we cannot add or subtract items. If you want additional items not included in your original order, please place a new order. We are unable to combine shipping and/or adjust charges on separately placed orders.
Tuber Origin.
Our tubers were all originally purchased from American farms like ours, from root stock we have grown out and propagated at our farm, and/or from our bulb wholesaler, Ednie Bulbs of Oregon. (I order case quantities from Ednie and don't have space to plant them all, so I sell off the surplus to US customers.) All tubers have been visually inspected.
A Word About Disease.
We guard carefully against disease by keeping our tools clean and our storage media fresh, and we will never sell or keep anything that looks suspicious.
That said, according to the American Dahlia Society Genome Project, dahlias and viruses have been co-existing for thousands of years. Diseases like leafy gall, crown gall, bacterial fascitis and others are common among dahlia species, and I cannot personally remember a completely disease-free season in the 30+ years I have been growing dahlias.
Although I cannot guarantee all tubers will be disease free, I can guarantee they have been grown, dug, divided and stored under appropriate conditions with great care for sanitation practices. They have also been carefully visually inspected, and anything suspicious-looking is immediately culled. Please let me know of any issues.
Receiving Your Tubers.
We offer local pickup or shipping via USPS Priority Mail. Please select your preferred method at the time of online checkout.
Open the package and check the tubers immediately upon receiving them. If weather or schedule prevent immediate planting, it will be fine to hold your tubers briefly in vermiculite or peat moss. The things to avoid until they are planted are freezing temperatures or hot "open" conditions outside the storage medium which can cause them to shrivel and dry. Alternatively, you could pot them up immediately after receiving them until your planting time arrives. If you do, be careful not to overwater. Dahlia tubers need little to no water until they are actively growing. We cannot be responsible for damage or loss of tubers resulting from failure to unpackage and or correctly care for them after arrival.
Please remember, we are a small family farm. We have cared for these tubers with great devotion, but we are humans and hiccups happen.
Shipping
Shipping of our dahlia tubers is available only within the United States.
Tubers will ship mid-April to mid-May, when weather on both ends permits it. (Frozen tubers turn to mush and will not produce viable plants.)
Your order will be packaged carefully, shipped USPS Priority Mail, and arrive at your door a few days later. You will receive a shipping confirmation email with tracking. Please monitor your mailbox closely. Shipping will be complete no later than mid-May.
Local Pickup
We will prepare all local orders for mid-April and mid-May pickup at these locations:
Missoula - Burton's Classic Hair
Florence - The Backyard Tap House
N Stevensville - Bleeding Heart Flower Farm
Stevensville - By Lydia Rae
Hamilton - Chapter One Bookstore
A pick-up email reminder will be sent.
Because of the intensity of early spring Farm operations and limitations of time and space, and not wanting to over-impose on our wonderful storefront partners, we are not able to offer earlier or multiple different pickup dates.
Planting & growing your tubers.
Remember that dahlias cannot be planted outside until there is no risk of freezing weather but can be potted up and grown indoors if need be for a short time. Soil temperatures should reach 60F before planting. Here are some basics to keep in mind: Plant your tubers immediately after your area's last frost date. Your dahlias should sprout within 5 weeks after planting. Tubers should be planted in full sun and well-drained soil with lots of organic matter after the risk of frost is over. Soil temperature should be 60F degrees before planting. (Tomato and pepper planting time corresponds well with dahlia planting time.) AVOID TEMPTATION TO OVER WATER dahlias after they are planted! They require very little moisture -- almost none -- until the plants are about 6” tall. We sell cutting varieties. Unlike plant starts from your garden center that are bred for dwarf bedding plants or short stature containers, these plants will get tall. As they grow, some varieties will reach over 6 feet. It is therefore best to stake them so they don't fall over in the wind or from the weight of their own flowers. Here at our Farm, our production method for supporting them is fiberglass stakes on the perimeter of 4 foot beds, with hortonova netting stretched horizontally over the bed and 2 lines of baling twine corralling the stakes. But when I was a hobby gardener, I staked plants individually and that worked well. Dahlias are a bushy, herbaceous plant grown as an annual in most regions of the U.S. Spacing of 12-18" is recommended. I space mine much tighter for production purposes (48" beds, 5 rows to the bed, tubers every 10" down the row), and I get away with it because of the dryness of our climate, but this tight spacing does require some extra steps to remove lower foliage mid-season and to treat any powdery mildew that may occur. Bone meal or a bit of dry organic fertilizer will provide nutrients to support healthy plants. Once they are growing vigorously, dahlias need regular watering. After 12-16 weeks, your plants will start to produce flowers, and will continue to do so all the way until first frost, especially if you cut them frequently. That said, temperatures over 90F are hard on dahlias and their flower production may slow during the hottest part of the summer. In our area, dahlias come into their own in August, September and even October if fall is mild. Dahlias love to be cut, and your cutting and dead-heading deep into the plant will be rewarded with more blooms. It may feel intense, but cut them hard! The best way to extend the vase life of dahlias is to cut them before they are fully open. We cut ours when 50-75% open. Also, make sure you keep them in clean water. On average, they should last 4-5 days if cut at the proper harvest stage. In the fall, a week or two after the plants die back from a killing frost, you can dig up the dahlia tubers to store them for another growing season. Dahlia tubers need to be stored in a dark, cool (but not freezing) high humidity environment through the winter months. There are many storage methods and loads of information available on storage and dividing techniques, but our favorite method is to store ours in plastic totes in vermiculite or peat moss in our crawl space.
Happy shopping, growing, and we wish you a very successful season with dahlias!
