Dahlia Tuber Sale Information, Terms & Conditions

First sale is March 8, 2025 at 11:00am CT. Subsequent restocks are likely as we review inventory (newsletter subscribers are notified first.

Sale Date & Time

Ordering & Returns

Our Dahlia Tuber Sale is online only.

If you have an item in your cart, it is not reserved until you complete your order, successfully check out, and receive a confirmation order number and email. Dahlia Mania, especially for some rare varieties, is a real thing. I know the frustration of trying to check out while things go out of stock. This functionality is related to e-commerce, and not something the farmers can control. 

Once an order is placed, we are unable to add or remove items or combine shipping. If you would like to add any additional items, you'll need to submit an additional order, which will ship separately. All sales are final and only qualify for a return if there is an issue with the item received, based on guarantees as outlined below (and are at the sole discretion of Petal Back Farm LLC).

Limits

We may set some limits on the most sought-after varieties and when inventory is limited, so that more people have a chance to grow them. This will clearly be stated in the product description. Please respect these limitations when placing your order. We will return any order that does not respect these limits.

Our Promise & Policies

Above all else, we want you to be happy with your order! Plant and tuber health is a top priority on our farm. We believe in working with nature and not against nature. Although we are not certified organic, everything is grown organically with plant and pollinator health in mind. We also introduce beneficial insects for pest and disease management. Aside from growing with plant and pollinator health in mind, we also proactively test for cucumber mosaic virus (CMV), tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV), impatiens necrotic spot virus (INSV), and tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). These tests are expensive, so it's not economically feasible to test every plant at this time, but we believe it's a step in the right direction.

We are ruthless during dividing, and save only our best tubers for the sale (the less-desirable tubers are what we grow!). That said, some varieties do store better than others, and some may be shipped with minor imperfections that will not impact viability or vigor (our field is a testament to this as this is mostly what we grow). It's also possible that there is a storage failure between the sale and shipping. If there is storage loss, we will refund it from your order.

We follow the American Dahlia Society's "Gold Standard" for dividing by using sanitized tools between divides. Everything is triple labeled and those labels are carried throughout the entire process, from planting to storing to dividing to shipping. Our tubers are inspected and approved by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture. 

We guarantee that your tubers will arrive to you with at least one viable eye. Upon receipt of your order, please inspect your tubers immediately. If you have any concerns, please email us at support@petalbackfarm.com within 5 days of receiving your order. The email should include your order number and a photo. At the sole discretion of Petal Back Farm, we may either replace or refund your order. Please note that the Shipping Cost for your order is non-refundable. Please do not send messages on social media as these are easily missed due to volume and weird filtering (and we want you to know that as a customer of PBF you are much more important to us than Instagram!).

After 5 days from shipment, the buyer assumes all responsibility. While your satisfaction is of the utmost importance to us, we cannot be held responsible for improper storage once you receive your tubers, growing conditions, neglect, pest damage, rot after planting, and so forth. Similarly, if you decide to pot up your tubers for cuttings or otherwise, we cannot be held responsible for rot, desiccation, mold, plant failure, and so forth (these are advanced growing techniques and a lot can go awry, even for experienced growers and perfectly-viable tubers—choosing to do so is at your own risk).

Although we do our best to provide you with the healthiest true varieties, mistakes can happen. If for some reason, the tubers you order are not what you expected, please email us at support@petalbackfarm.com by the third week of September. The email should include your order number and a photo. At the sole discretion of Petal Back Farm, we may replace or refund your order (please do not send messages on social media). Please note that the Shipping Cost for your order is non-refundable. 

As previously noted above, our tubers are inspected and approved by the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture. We follow ADS recommendations of culling the field of any suspicious plants during the growing season, randomly test, sanitize between tools, and use several organic biological methods to keep pests controlled. We do everything within our power to ensure healthy stock. That said, by purchasing tubers from us, you accept the fact that dahlias sometimes get disease, and that these are not 100% avoidable and/or detectable (as plants can be asymptomatic). In fact, according to the American Dahlia Society's ongoing virus research, an average of 87% of healthy, asymptomatic dahlia plants carry at least one dormant virus. Interestingly, one ADS study found that 38% of clean stock planted from previously negatively-tested plants in 2016 tested positive in 2017.

Payments

Payment can be made through either PayPal or a major credit card.

Sales Tax

All Wisconsin state residents will be charged sales tax.

Shipping

We will ship all orders starting in April, weather permitting, and it takes multiple weeks to process all orders. If your order includes items other than tubers (i.e., seeds, corms), these will all ship together in April. For immediate shipping of other items, please place a separate order. We can only ship to the United States (sorry, no international orders at this time but we are in discussions with our Department of Ag). If you have concerns with this shipment timeframe, please (respectfully) do not order, as we are not staffed to accommodate special requests at this time. Everything is shipped via USPS Priority Mail (rates are below). Once your order ships, you'll receive a confirmation email with tracking information.

Shipping rates are:
1–4 tubers = $10.65
5–24 tubers = $18
25–40 tubers = $26.30
41–80 = $45.60
81+ = $62.70 (if shipping is less, we will absolutely refund, larger orders are just difficult to calculate upfront).

Due to ecommerce system limitations, we do not offer combined shipping. It's a logistical nightmare and we've learned it opens us up for errors, because it's completely manual on the backend. While it's not a perfect solution, this is the reason we do tiered shipping versus a flat rate across the board. This way, the shipping price and the box size are appropriate for the amount of tubers ordered (p.s., free shipping is not free and those costs are built into the products). We'll continue to evaluate and adjust based on feedback, as well as system improvements.

Local friends: Due to logistics, but also personal time constraints, we do not offer farm pickups at this time. (Even mail carriers have a really difficult time finding our farm 😅). Apologies for any inconvenience, but we will send out a newsletter if this changes.

Preparing for the Sale

You can preview varieties here. All varieties will be marked as out of stock until the sale. Please note that final varieties and prices are not guaranteed until the site goes live for the sale, but we'll do our best to keep it as accurate and as up-to-date as possible. The morning of the sale, the page will go blank until the sale goes live (this is so we can update the website for the sale). If for some reason there is a storage issue, we'll refund the variety from your order.

Dahlia Care Tips

If you are unable to plant right away, be sure to have a plan for storing your tubers. Storage can be tricky business and entirely dependent on your unique climate and location. Here at the farm, we store our dahlia tubers in vermiculite in our cooler (a cool, dark place between 45–55 degrees F works well) and around 70% humidity. Be sure to check often for rot and/or desiccation as dahlia tubers are sensitive to moisture and are prone to rot in wet conditions.

Plant dahlia tubers in the spring, after all danger of frost has passed. If there is excessive rain in the forecast, wait until this passes, as dahlia tubers are prone to rot in super wet conditions.

Choose a location with well-draining soil (pH 6.5–7.0) and full sun (at least 6–8 hours). If you haven’t already, prepare soil with amendments/compost based on soil needs. You can see exactly how we fertilize our soil organically here.

Dahlia plants can get quite large and may require staking. We use T-Posts and twine.

Finally

That was a lot, but we want to make sure we cover all the bases. Hopefully we can all get back to growing flowers now.

At the end of the day, we're just a couple of dreamers who love growing things! As a dahlia enthusiast, I enjoy the madness, but I want you to have the best experience possible, and I hope you know we're doing *our best* to provide that experience.

From one dahlia lover to the next, CHEERS!

And may the odds forever be in your favor :)

~Maggie, Matt, and the DAHLIAS!

Below is all of the information regarding our dahlia tuber sale. Please review this information prior to the sale. By purchasing dahlia tubers from us, you agree to the following terms and conditions.

As noted above, there is always risk when buying plants. By purchasing tubers from Petal Back Farm LLC, you are agreeing that the maximum amount of damages entitled to in any claim are not to exceed the total cost of the tubers purchased. Refunds or replacements are at the sole discretion of Petal Back Farm LLC. Petal Back Farm LLC is not responsible for any compensation beyond a refund for the amount of tubers purchased by the buyer.

Limit of Liability

Tuber Expectations

I once saw the most hilarious Instagram post about people getting upset about ugly tubers when they produce the same beautiful flowers (I think she said something along the lines of she can only assume people are praising their tubers on a shrine before planting them, while she's happy paying $X for a piece of beef jerky LOL). I wanted to make this funny like that, but I'm opting for level setting expectations in the gentlest way possible, because tubers are an investment and they come with a lot of emotion these days😅.

OK, here we go: Tubers come in ALL shapes and sizes (Fig. 1). Some are cute, while others are downright ugly. Some are fat with hardly no neck, while others are wrinkly and have long, skinny necks. Some are hairy, while others have lenticels. Some are massively large, while others are tiny. What matters is that they are viable. They need enough body to supply enough energy for growth (standard acceptable size is AAA battery), an intact neck, and a viable eye (see Fig. 2 for "Anatomy of a Tuber" if these terms are unfamiliar).

We guarantee all will be the size of AAA battery or larger, have an intact neck, and a viable eye. If there are any issues with these upon inspection, please email us a picture within 5 days of receiving your order and we are happy to help.

While we keep the ugliest ducklings, that doesn't mean the ones we share are perfect. If this bothers you, please (respectfully) do not place an order. Sometimes, eyes are dormant and very hard to see (Fig. 4). Over the years, we started circling the harder-to-see eyes for folks. Please note that sometimes, they will be wrinkly, but within reason (Fig. 3, sorry my husband took this picture😂). Some varieties simply store this way, whether for that season or all the time. We try to give two-fors in this case, but not always. While we keep the skinniest necks for ourselves, some *only* have skinny necks, so they may have skinny necks. We try to note these things in the listings, but we're dealing with hundreds of varieties and thousands of tubers and are only two people, so please bear with us. We would not send you something that we would not plant ourselves. I note this as a reminder of our own operation but also other suppliers (it's just a headache of emails and unrecouped costs—be kind, most suppliers are just garden and flower lovers doing their best).

That said, we are not immune from mistakes! If there is any issue with your order, please let us know. We are *always* happy to help.

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

FIGURE 4