Special Terms of Sale for Fall Shipped Dahlia Tubers
** PLEASE NOTE: Customer assumes all risk for fall shipped dahlia tubers; this is including but not limited to the potential for freezing in transit, receipt of tubers and storage of tubers through winter. If your local night temperatures are expected to dip below freezing in November during shipping, please consider adding a heat pack to your order.
All varieties available in the fall tuber sale are anticipated to be available in the spring tuber pre-sale.
At Home Organics will not issue any refunds for tubers shipped in November. All necessary precautions will be taken to ensure safe transport of viable tubers including cushioned packaging, the optional addition of 72-hour heat packs and insured postage. Any claims due to transport will be the responsibility of the buyer with file with the appropriate shipping company. We will be using UPS and USPS Priority service for all fall shipped tubers.
As a reminder, Shipping Fees continue to increase along with packaging. We are making every attempt to hold our shipping fee flat this year. At Home Organics will have a single flat rate for all US shipping addresses. All attempts will be made to combine shipping for multiple orders going to the same shipping address.
However, we are going to try to offer free shipping on all orders with 6 or more tubers. This is a new method for us and our platform, please email us at AtHomeOrganicsllc@gmail.com with any questions or corrections.
Any order with less than 6 tubers will incur a shipping flat rate of $18.
Please review our farm practices and protocols before ordering. We prioritize customer service and want to be as transparent as possible throughout the entire dahlia growers experience with our farm.
What are your thoughts on sanitation? Do you ever cull entire plants?
ARGH! Yes, we do. It is one of the most painful things to do as a dahlia grower. You spend so much time daydreaming about these beautiful blooms only to find that the tubers you planted are showing up viral.
The hardest part about dahlia viruses is that they can lay dormant for years. . . That means a perfectly 'healthy looking' plant one year can get stressed either due to overwatering, underwatering, excessive heat, cold snaps or soil chemistry and **Poof** you now have the viral symptoms manifesting on your treasured plants. When this happens, we remove the entire plant. And, by remove, I mean we actually remove it from our property in a plastic garbage bag. Our compost heap doesn't get nearly hot enough to eradicate virus from plant material. The surest way of preventing the spread of virus is to remove it entirely and treat for the insects that are known to spread disease.
Do you test your dahlia plants for virus?
At this time, we do NOT test every dahlia plant grown on our property. We grow over 3000 named dahlias and 1000 first year seedlings. The cost to test every plant is exorbitant.
Instead we actively monitor our rows daily. If there is a hint of suspicion with any plant, it is removed. Period.
We also partner with our local county USDA representative to inspect and test for viruses.
Is your farm open to the public for U-Picks? How do you maintain sanitation between plants?
At Home Organics is a family farm that is closed to the public. The only people in our dahlia beds are those that know the importance of sanitation (and the domesticated deer that we catch on trail cams).
We do not "sanitize" between every single cut. True sanitization of snips or shears between plants would require the application of a disinfectant and 10 minutes of processing between every plant. We'd never get our fields harvested if we had to wait 10 mins between 3000+ plants.
Instead, we dip and wipe our snips with a diluted bleach solution between EVERY PLANT. This is a proactive measure we take to reduce virus, however it is not full proof. Our practice of aggressive monitoring and culling of suspected infectious plants along with regularly scheduled fertilizer applications aids in the maintenance of healthy stock.
Unfortunately virus can lie dormant for years. Everything begins with optimal soil conditions, active monitoring, robust, consistent pest management and supplemental fertilization to produce healthy, beautiful flowers. Since we emphasize optimal growing conditions on our farm, we cannot garantee virus is completely absent in our stock. If your growing conditions are not optimal, if you practice passive growing or if your pest pressure is substantially different or greater than our microclimate, virus may present itself or spread by insect vectors in your area.
Is your Farm certified organic?
At Home Organics is not certified organic at this time. We strive to leverage sustainable natural growing practices that don't require synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fungicides.
We believe strongly in the biodynamic necessity of our soil as well as the native diversity of our pollinators, birds and wildlife. As such we limit our application of these necessities to strictly USDA organically approved products instead opting for integrated pest management with the regular release of beneficial and predatory insects.
