Watch our dahlia tuber unboxing video to know what to expect in your order from Columbia River Dahlias. Click on the image above to watch the video. 

Video transcription: 

Hi I'm Shelby Gamache with Columbia River Dahlias and today we are showing you an unboxing video for those who ordered tubers from us this year! 

So this is an order we just packed up and I just wanted to open it and go through it with you in case you have any questions or you're new to growing. Just to kind of give you an insight of what is coming in the mail. So, when you get your box in the mail you'll want to open it immediately don't set it aside and wait a couple of weeks to open it. 

Get your box in the mail open it up and what you should see inside is some tissue paper and a postcard and a little note that says thank you please check on your tubers. Pull those things out, on the back of our postcard is planting and growing instructions you'll want to hold on to that and review that. Keep it somewhere during the season because it has a lot of information throughout the season not just at planting time. 

Also inside your box will be your packing slip, you'll see a nursery stock inspection sticker on your packing slip. That means that we had someone from the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) come out and inspect our tubers. They just came out a couple weeks ago to inspect the tubers in storage and then they also came out during the 2020 growing season to inspect our plants while they were in bloom. 

Okay and then you've got tissue paper pull that out. Every bag contains one variety. This person ordered three of the brown sugar, cornel bronze and then it's labeled with how many are in the bag. So three brown sugars, one cornel bronze and you can see the other tubers that are in here too. You'll want to pull those out and then you'll want to open them and actually look at each tuber and see what they look like. Make sure that there's nothing wrong with them.

I pulled a couple other of tubers aside actually to show you what you might find in your bags. All four of these are one variety just so you know. So you can see anything that's big and plump and thick like this, you could also see something that's skinny you can see a little bit of dehydration happening on this and that's totally fine. If it was shriveled up smaller than your pinky that might be a little concerning but a little bit of dehydration is normal and you'll still get a really beautiful strong healthy plant out of this. Other ones are just long and skinny and this one has like a really tiny head but there's still a really great eye on here and then this one if you can see the size comparison here. So all four of these will produce the exact same size plants and blooms throughout the season. Don't be afraid like oh I got a tiny tuber in one of my varieties and then in another one I got an enormous tuber, that doesn't matter. 

Each tuber is going to produce something really beautiful and we have gone through and inspected for eyes probably three or four times from when we dug them, when we divided them, when we sorted them, and now again when we are packing them. We're very diligent about finding an eye and only sending tubers that have a viable eye. If you can't see a viable eye, they are sometimes hard to identify when they're dormant, don't panic it's still ready to plant, and it will produce a plant. 

If you have any questions please feel free to contact us. Our email address is columbiariverdahlias@gmail.com