HOW SHOULD YOUR TUBERS LOOK WHEN YOU RECEIVE THEM? This is the time of year when you are excitedly receiving your dahlia tubers from orders you placed months ago. It’s the season of “happy mail” for gardeners! While it’s exciting to be receiving these orders, plenty of questions often come up. So, let’s talk about them. Firstly, let’s get the elephant out of the room. These tubers we are receiving? They’re usually pretty ugly. Downright unattractive in every way, and we can’t fault them for it. Unlike a tulip, who’s smooth and shiny bulb looks like a Hershey’s Kiss, full of the promise of a delicious spring bloom, dahlia tubers —at first glance—don’t leave us with much to be inspired by. And yet, they are full of promise all the same. Some plants just choose to be a little mysterious with revealing their beauty, asking us to stretch our imaginations, and dahlias falls into this category. Dahlia tubers are the underground storage organs of the dahlia plant. Each variety of dahlia naturally produces a different shaped and sized tuber. Just like people, Dahlia tubers come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes. None of these shapes or sizes are “good“ or “bad“, they are just different. The shape and size of your tuber does not affect how it will bloom. Tubers are typically irregularly shaped and have a knobby or bulbous structure. They vary in size, generally ranging from a few inches to several inches long. Some varieties are long and skinny, others are round and full. The most important part of your tuber is the top piece of “crown”, found at the top of the neck of the tuber. As long as your tuber has a piece of crown and a strong unbroken neck, regardless of the size of the tuber, it will very likely grow. The “crown” is the part of the tuber that produces the “eye”, where the shoot grows from. What if a piece of the bottom of your tuber has been cut off? No need to worry. This happens accidentally with a shovel in the fall, when tubers are being dug up. Often times we might accidentally slice through the bottom of a tuber, but it bears no affect the health of the tuber or on whether or not the tuber will grow. It’s purely cosmetic.