The million dollar question! Everybody has a favorite method. Here are a few methods in brief:

• Wrap each tuber in plastic wrap and store in your refrigerator crisper

• Store in peat moss in a cardboard box in a cool, dark, damp place.

• Store in vermiculite in a plastic tub with a lid in a cool, dark place.

• Store without storage medium in a five-gallon bucket covered with newsprint in a cool dark place.

However you do it, consider these key factors: Temperature, humidity, and air flow.

Temperature Dahlias should be stored at about 40 degrees. A little colder or a little warmer is ok, but if they freeze, they’ll die, and if they get too warm, humidity and rot become a problem. A garage, crawlspace, or cold basement often works well.

Humidity Dahlias gain and lose moisture in cycles in response to their environment, so they need to be kept in a somewhat damp atmosphere (think how damp the ground is, where dahlias in warmer climates naturally overwinter). To facilitate this, most people use a storage medium.

A storage medium has two jobs: it keeps tubers from losing too much moisture, and it absorbs excess moisture respirated over the winter. Most beginners seem to have the best luck with peat moss as a storage medium. The trick is to check it frequently (every two-four weeks) and add moisture if it gets too dry, or leave your storage containers open to airflow if it gets too damp.

Air flow Speaking of airflow, you’ll need a container to store your dahlias. Most people store them in plastic buckets or tubs with a lid, filled with a storage medium, since that offers the most control. However, if you have a particularly humid and cold environment relatively safe from critters (like the classic root cellar) you can even use a plain old cardboard box with soil.

Want to learn more on how to avoid losing your stock over the winter? Check out our Storage Masterclass here: https://www.sunsetviewfarmdahlias.com/courses

Yes you can! With caution. Dahlias need about 120 days in the ground to reach full maturity during a season. Don’t harvest them much earlier than that.

You can certainly cut back the dahlias and go through the whole regular prep process early, however they will start sprouting eyes all over again if it’s still warm in your zone. Some growers do this intentionally to make it easier to divide the clumps in fall.

We usually prefer to let nature take its course, but with careful planning, an earlier harvest can be successful.

The “eye” on a dahlia is a growth point, similar to eyes on a potato. But unlike potatoes, Dahlia eyes occur only on the crown of a tuber, the spot where each individual tuber attaches to the main stalk of the plant. If a tuber does not have an eye (if it’s a “blind” tuber) it’ll never grow anything.

It can be extremely difficult finding eyes most of the time. The best case scenario is if you have a killing frost, then the temperature warms up over the next week or two before harvest. The frost will kill the stalk, then the eyes on the tubers will start to swell or even regrow tiny little shoots which makes dividing them a lot easier.

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Another option is to store your tubers as clumps, then wake them up one-two months before it's time to replant, so the eyes start to swell. Some tubers take up to three months to eye up nicely. Others will wake up within two weeks. Most are wide awake within one-two months of returning to 60-70 degree temperatures.

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There are many video tutorials online for finding dahlia eyes, but they’re tough to see even in the best videos. It can be really helpful to take a few undivided clumps out of storage quite early, pot them with the crowns sticking up above ground (they won’t dehydrate) and watch them wake up. You’ll be able to see in real time whether or not something you thought was an eye really was.

Every variety is different. Some tubers will show visible eyes within two weeks of being “woken up,” that is, moved to warmer temperatures. Some take two months to show any signs of life, or even longer!

A tuber that produces healthy looking roots but fails to grow any sprouts is likely a “blind” tuber, meaning the body of the tuber is healthy and alive, but there is no viable eye present at the crown. A tuber growing like this is “trying it’s best,” you might say - but it will eventually die without producing a sprout. It will not generate a new growth point. Dahlia tubers are not like some other tubers (like potatoes) in that growth points only exist at the crown of the tuber, where the tuber once was joined to the stem of the mother plant, and occasionally at low points on a young stem.

But you’ll never find an eye on the body of a tuber - the crown and living stem are the only places the genetic information required for new green growth are present.

Dahlias are not terribly fussy to ship. The key is to ship them early in the season when temperatures are cool but not freezing.

Ideally, this should be true both for your region and the destination. However, most places in the US are generally safe to ship to by mid-April so long as the recipient is on the lookout for the box and never lets it sit outside overnight.

Ship dahlias in a microcosm of your successful winter storage environment. If you stored your dahlias in bins with peat moss, ship them in ziplock bags in the same peat moss. If you stored them with no growing medium in crates or buckets topped with newsprint (like we do), ship them the same way.

Use the smallest box they’ll fit in and make sure there is plenty of padding. Wood shavings and newsprint (our favorite) work best. Loose peat moss or potting soil tend to spill out during shipping, making a mess and reducing the efficacy of your padding. When the box is all packed, give it a gentle shake. There should be nothing at all rattling around.

If shipped at the right time of year and packaged properly, dahlias do not need to be shipped priority or overnight. Economy shipping works just fine (wholesale dahlias are shipped in bulk from overseas growers and stored in crates for months at a time - yours will do fine in the mail for a few days).

It's good to remember (we forget ourselves sometimes) that though the flowers are so gorgeous, and we package up the tubers in pretty boxes, the tubers themselves at the end of the day are roots that go in the ground, and all sorts of things grow on them.

As long as the eye is there and the tuber is still firm, a little fuzz or black mold won’t hurt anything. They'll grow beautiful flowers.

If you're still concerned about a particular tuber, squeeze it firmly to check for hollow-rot. If it's questionably firm, snip off the bottom third. If the tuber is healthy, this won't hurt it. If it's beginning to rot from the inside out, this will reveal the problem.

We try to make sure we give our growers the best chance of having beautiful blooms, and with an expert eye-spotting team and pre-sprouted tubers, chances are your tuber will wake up and grow!

Sometimes the eyes still take a little time to wake up or the sprouts can get snapped off before shipping, so we always ask that you give yours a little bit of time to grow before reaching out to us (since shipping season is when we are the busiest!)

If you received a tuber that you are unsure is viable, please do the following:

- Take a few clear photos or a video of the entire tuber right away! We can't

help you as well as we'd like to unless we have photos of the tuber in question.

- Pot the tuber up in a warm sunny place in soil, (like a sunny windowsill inside) with the crown

(the part with the growth point) sticking just out of the soil, and keep the soil moist but not

soaked with water. Any potting soil will do!

Most of the time when we do that, we’ll start to see the sleepy sprouts pop up within a week or two.

If you still don't see anything starting to grow 2 weeks after potting the tuber up:

- Take another updated photo or video of the tuber

- Fill out THIS FORM including the original photo and the updated photo, the tuber variety

name, your order number, and any other details of concern

We have many examples of folks having good success waiting just a few more weeks for a sprout, so we appreciate your patience with this process!