From Our Garden to Yours: Caring for Your Dahlia Tubers

Thank you for choosing Dahlia Doctor as a source for healthy, wide-awake dahlia tubers that are ready to plant. These tubers have been nurtured in our garden, and now it’s your turn to continue their journey in yours.

The dahlias you grow from these tubers will fill your garden with colorful blooms all season long!

With so many places to source dahlias these days, we’re honored that you’ve chosen Dahlia Doctor and trusted us to deliver exactly what we promised.

The Upper Garden , where dahlias grew that may have made your tubers

Every variety has thrived in our own garden, where we’ve carefully grown and evaluated it for at least one full season (usually many seasons) before sharing it with you.

• Each tuber has already emerged from dormancy, with one or more visible eyes or shoots.

• They come from plants that are visibly free of disease.

• We use science-backed, ecologically responsible cultivation methods.

• Each tuber is triple-checked while in bloom to ensure correct labeling.

• We pack them in compostable, renewable wood shavings for protection.

We package each tuber in its own bag. There is a small quantity of kiln-dried pine shavings inside, which serves to cushion the tuber during shipping. It gently cushions the tuber while helping maintain its natural moisture balance.

Open the bag and gently remove the tuber. Give it a good look. You will see either an eye or a small shoot, which is the beginning of what will be your dahlia plant’s stem. If your tuber has a stem, try not to break it off. But if you do (or if it broke off in shipping), don’t worry! It will grow back and may even send up multiple new stems as a replacement.

Eyes usually appear as small white bumps or “pimples”, shown here with red arrows

Shoots may be white or green, as shown here. These will grow into a beautiful dahlia!

Inside each bag is a paper label with the variety’s name and a small photo, which was taken in our garden last summer when your dahlia was in bloom. 

Keep that label with your tuber! If you would like, you can write the name directly on the tuber with a felt-tip pen. We recommend making a tag or plant label with your dahlia’s name, so you can identify it as it grows and blooms in your garden.

Check your packing slip, which has the name of each dahlia contained in your order. Make sure that the labeled tuber bags match what you ordered (we already checked quite a few times, but you should verify it as well).

If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at  info@dahliadoctor.com  , and we will respond within 24 hours.

Dormancy is nature’s way of putting dahlia tubers on pause for winter storage. Under proper conditions (like ours), tubers remain fully hydrated and will not begin to grow until they have been gradually warmed up, simulating conditions they would experience in the ground early in the spring.

Our tubers have already undergone this warming-up process, triggering growth with swollen eyes, small shoots, and early root development. If you live in a frost-free growing zone, or if your last possible frost date is past, you can plant our tubers anytime.

If you live in a colder climate, store your Dahlia Doctor tubers in a cool, frost-free location. The growth will not stop altogether, but it should slow down a bit.

Do NOT put our tubers in the refrigerator! The dehumidifiers used in most fridges can dry out your tubers. Anywhere that is on the cool side and out of direct sunlight will be fine.

The Lower Garden , where dahlias grew that may have made your tubers

All our dahlia tubers are grown from plants that are inspected constantly during the growing season. The tubers are examined and evaluated at every step during harvest, division, storage, and packaging. Our dahlias undergo annual inspection by the Washington Department of Agriculture, and we are a licensed plant nursery in Washington State.

We guarantee that every tuber we sell has at least one viable eye and will grow into a healthy dahlia plant with proper care and cultivation. Because many dahlia diseases are spread by insects and soil, our guarantee does not cover viruses or gall diseases.

We promise that every dahlia tuber you get from us will be correctly identified and labeled. In the extremely unlikely event that a tuber you purchase from us does not grow true, we will refund the price of that tuber anytime within six months of planting.

As a small thank-you, we’re sharing a bit more of our garden with you—a packet of open-pollinated seeds harvested last season from the Dahlia Doctor garden.

While dahlias grown from seed won’t be exact replicas of their parent plants, they often produce colorful, medium-height blooms that add beauty and attract happy pollinators to your garden.

A mix of seed-grown dahlias and named varieties. Your seeds were collected here!

Even if you’ve never grown dahlias from seed, we encourage you to give it a try—on us! To help you get started, we’ve put together an easy guide:  Learn How to Grow Beautiful Dahlias from Seed.

We take great pride in growing dahlias and are excited to share them with our gardening friends. 

Some tubers are small, others enormous. Some are gnarly, others elegant. Remember, the pledge we make is every Dahlia Doctor tuber will grow into the variety you ordered, given proper care.

Now get out there and garden like you mean it!