Dahlia Tuber FAQ

Please read this Dahlia Tuber Care Guide if you have any questions about your order.

When is your 2024 sale?

Tuber sale will always be announced first via newsletter, but I always have my sale in April.

Can I pay extra to buy before your sale?

Yes, you have the option to purchase a membership for next year's tuber sale when they reopen.

Where are your dahlia tubers from?

I believe in transparency and have no issues answering any questions you have about tubers. As I am growing my farm, my business, and my dahlia tuber stock, I have to purchase from wholesalers in the Netherlands until I can 100% provide tubers grown on my own farm. Often tubers from the Netherlands aren’t very pretty and can be on the smaller side, but they will still produce the same, beautiful flowers. A perk to purchasing wholesale, is that I have an import permit from the CFIA which allows me to source hard-to-find tubers here in Canada. It has always been a dream and business goal of mine to be able to provide as many dahlia tuber varieties to Canadians as I possibly can. Dahlia tuber sources are listed on each dahlia tuber variety page; I have limited farm tubers for sale because I keep them for myself.

New for 2023

Dahlia tubers have always shipped with a guranteed viable eye, but for 2023 we are going to do bigger divisions and sell some varieties in small clumps of 2+ tubers to give you more eyes on your tuber purchase. The prices have also increased to reflect this change and to reflect the laborious task of dividing, storing, labeling, sorting and shipping the tubers. Caramel Antique is sold in whole or half clumps, as this variety was atrocious to divide and store until shipping. 

How do I store my tubers?

If you've received tubers from me, they are shipped in a zip plastic baggie with vermiculite. This is ideal long-term storage for my climate, but it might not work well for where you live until it is time to plant.

Regardless of where you live, please open up the bags when you receive them to inspect the tubers, and then keep them in a cool, dark area (like your basement) until it's time to get them in the ground. If you want to get a head start on the season, put them in a tray or a pot with some potting soil and watch them wake up!

Tip: If they start to get wrinkly, that's okay. It just means they're starting to lose some moisture; give them a mist or get them potted with a little drink of water, and watch them rehydrate. If they have a little dusting of mold—that’s okay too, just dust it off and air dry.

How can I guarantee I get what I want from your sale?

The fastest way to checkout is to have a free Shopify/ShopPay account, make an account on my website, be signed in, and use ShopPay to purchase. Tubers may disappear from your cart---just because they are in your cart, does not mean that they are secured in your order until you check out. This is standard for every single e-commerce website, items are never able to be saved in your cart while you're shopping.

I have had it suggested to me to limit the household quantity of highly-sought-after varieties to 1 or 2, but I'm not going to do that. What some people may not realize is that with every bell and whistle comes a subscription fee for an app on my website platform; it's not something that is worth it to me, and as a consumer, I want to be able to purchase as much as I can of what I want.

Pro-tip: if you really want a certain variety I offer, purchase only that variety as fast as you can. Come back and do a separate order to get anything else you'd like. 

Note: You can combine shipping on two orders; if you go over 2 orders, you will be invoiced $8 per each additional order to account for higher shipping and handling charges. 

I can't place an order, can you help me?

I have had a very small amount of people message, email, (and even find my cell phone number somewhere online and text me!!) in a panic because they cannot check out during the tuber sale. Most common problem is checkout saying "your address is not recognized", this happened to two people last year and I'm honestly not sure why; 1 customer figured it out and the other couldn't.

The only thing I've been able to figure out is entering your street NAME before your street NUMBER. If all else fails, please select "pick up" instead of shipping, check out, and send me an email letting me know you'd like it shipped and I can invoice you for shipping.

It has also worked to erase everything and re-type. This is a Shopify thing, not a Sarah's Cut Flowers thing, I apologize for any of you that encounter this hiccup!

If you would like me to in put your order manually, I can do that, but you might not get everything you want. To make it fair to everyone else, I can manually put it in as I see it, but please note I am closely monitoring the sale and answering questions as they come in.

Note: only purchase tubers and garden shears with your order. If you try to add anything else (ex. merchandise) it will not let you check out as merch ships from a 3rd party and the system gets confused.

Do you have a minimum or maximum tuber purchase limit?

No, I do not have a household limit or minimum purchase order. If you want 1 tuber or 100, have at it! I know lots of people will limit highly-sought-after varieties, but that's not a decision I've implemented for my tubers. Any time I add a condition like this to my sale, it costs me money to subscribe to an app on my website to pay for the service.

How much is shipping? Do you offer free shipping? Can I combine multiple orders or add to my current one?

Shipping is expensive, REALLY expensive, and it keeps going up every year, even twice a year Canada Post raises their prices. Shipping is based on weight of your purchase and destination, and as you've seen it impact your own life, fuel surcharges have increased drastically this spring.

Shipping from Alberta to BC and the prairie provinces ranges from $18-$25 (depending on the weight of your package) and Ontario and farther east it seems the minimum is about $22-$35 and it can get very expensive very fast. If shipping from Alberta is too expensive, try to choose a farm that is closer to you. I do NOT make any money on shipping costs, sometimes I even lose money if they change their rates from time of sale to the time I purchase the shipping label.

I have options for UPS and Purolator this year and to some regions it's cheaper than CP.

Will you ship your tubers early? I want to get them growing.

I will not ship your tubers until the risk of freezing is safe for their delivery route. Sometimes deliveries get delayed, rerouted, left on trucks, left outside....I don't want your tubers to freeze. If they freeze, they are "dead" and they will not be viable. If you are local, you can pick them up early if arranged.

If you insist on having them early, I can ship them out to you at your own risk. If you choose to to accept this risk, I will not issue refunds of any kind if they arrive damaged or frozen. No exceptions.

Do you ship internationally?

Due to export restrictions, I can only ship within Canada. You have way more options in the United States, at least, than we do here in Canada, but thank you for your interest. In order to be able to ship internationally, I would have to have a government inspection of my tubers and I’m not willing to do that at this time.

How do I plant my tubers?

There are so many wonderful resources out there, until I get my page done, I highly recommend checking out this guide to plant tubers. I also include a printed guide in every order.

What if my tuber isn't viable?

I will only sell and ship tubers to you that I know will have a viable eye, even if you cannot see it when you receive it, all dahlias are shipped with all the essential 'tools' they need to grow: crown, neck and body. Remember: eyes and sprouts are different. Sprouts/shoots grow from the eye, not all tubers will ship with a sprout as some can take a LONG time to wake up. All tubers have been handled and inspected multiple times by us before they reach you. When I divide my own, personal dahlia tubers in the fall, every single one of them is divided with an eye, but often when I check on them throughout storage, I can’t see the eyes, as they have gone dormant. A tuber needs at least 1 eye to grow and produce flowers. If you think you don't see an eye, sometimes they are not visible until they come out of dormancy and they are hidden in non-obvious places (like underneath in a crevice). I ask that you put your faith in me and in the product I'm selling you, and that it has an eye and will grow.

You can place your tubers in peat moss or potting soil in a tray in a warm area in the early spring to "wake them up" to ensure they have an eye. It is really important to note that certain varieties of dahlias take up to 12 weeks to wake up! Every variety is different and behaves differently, just like people.

Even if your tuber doesn't look the prettiest and is a bit wrinkly and bumpy, it should still grow, just give it a chance. However, if you plant your tubers and the plant doesn't grow, this is a risk you take when purchasing the tuber, and unfortunately there is nothing that I can do about this. It's the nature of gardening: not every single seed, corm, bulb or tuber that you plant will grow and bloom.

I tend to lose about 15% or more of the tubers that I plant myself to events out of my control such as rot once planted (too much moisture) or loss to pests. 

Once they leave my farm I cannot accept responsibility for how they grow and I cannot issue refunds, unless it is within 10 days of receiving them (see below for further details).

Can I get my money back if I'm not happy?

You may return your tubers for a full refund if you email us within 2 days of receiving them, and then you must ship them back to me within 10 days of receiving. You have to pay for expedited shipping at your own cost in the packaging and box they were shipped to you in and provide me with the tracking information. You cannot ship a tuber in a padded envelope or without a medium. This gives me the fair chance to re-sell the tubers or plant them myself; I cannot allow weeks for you to wait and see if they will grow. If you return them and they do not meet these standards, your refund will not be issued.

I cannot refund or replace tubers during the growing season, as it will be too late, and there are too many factors out of my control (as the seller) to determine what caused the tuber to not grow; such as (but not limited to) weather, pests and grower error.

The dahlia growing isn't the variety I purchased, now what?

Trust me, I understand how frustrating it is to get your hands on a variety of tuber that you've been looking forward to, only to find out it was mislabeled as the first bloom opens. This has happened to me many times, and as my business grows, I would like to compensate you for an accidentally mislabeled tuber, but this isn't possible at this point in time as it is extremely hard to get my wholesaler to compensate me for these mistakes too. Sometimes, I have personally mixed up labelling my dahlias when planting and they pop up somewhere else unexpectedly, so please make sure you label your dahlias as you plant.

Can I cancel my dahlia tuber order?

I have found in the past most people are antsy to cancel their orders because they aren't shipping fast enough. It is industry standard for Canadian dahlia sellers to not ship their tubers until near the end of April/beginning of May when the threat of freezing across the country has passed. I understand that not everyone knows this, but dahlias are generally not put into the soil until the middle of May, depending on your gardening zone. If you wish to cancel your dahlia tuber order with me for whatever reason, you can absolutely do that, but you will be subject to a $5 or 10% of your total order restocking fee, whichever is greater, which helps cover the fees it takes me to reverse the transaction and administrative fees. You will get the rest of the money you paid for your tubers and shipping refunded.

If you were hoping to take early cuttings of dahlias from tubers purchased from me, this timeline isn't feasible; this is the perk of storing your own dahlia tubers so you can wake them up earlier for cuttings. 

Are your tubers organic?

No, my tubers are not organic and cannot be grown if you are a certified organic grower. There are no such thing as GMO dahlias, so you do not need to be looking to source any and there is also no such thing as a "treated" dahlia tuber either. I will not sign an affidavit that my tubers are organic, and yes---I have been asked this.

My dahlia tuber has gall! Now what?

I will never intentionally send you a tuber with known/visible disease. Last fall, as I was digging up my tubers from wholesalers, I have unfortunately come across some crown and leafy gall. In short, gall is a bacterial plant disease and tubers presenting with gall should be burned---not composted or saved---burned. Crown gall looks like little pieces of cauliflower at the crown of the tuber clump with lots of little shoots; leafy gall looks very similar. If anything is ever suspicious, chuck it. Again---I cannot issue refunds, and I apologize if this happens, it is never my intention to sell infected tubers, but they can also become infected in the soil they are planted in.