Dahlia Tuber Disease

If you suspect your dahlia tuber is diseased, we recommend having them tested to confirm your diagnosis before disposing of your tuber stock. Symptoms of disease can mimic signs of other problems, and oftentimes there's a lot you can do to remediate a situation before throwing away your entire plant stock.

Keeping Your Plants Healthy

A healthy garden starts with pest and disease prevention. Insects like aphids and thrips can spread viruses, so regular pest control is essential. Treating regularly with an insecticide can help prevent problems before they arise.

If You Find a Problem

If you encounter an issue with your plants, we recommend treating with either an insecticide or fungicide to rule out problems caused by pests or fungus. If the new growth on your plants looks healthy, continue with regular treatments as needed.

If Problems Continue

If the problems you're experiencing continue after you've treated your plants, we recommend doing some testing before you dispose of your tuber stock.

Since we are growing on a commercial scale, we are testing our soil regularly and we send any plants that look symptomatic of disease to a lab to be tested. Over the years, we've had tubers that look like they have crown gall come back with a negative test result, meaning that even a plant showing symptoms of gall tested negative for the disease. (See more below)

Many symptoms of disease can also mimic signs of environmental distress: too much or too little water; poor drainage; poor nutrition, not enough sun can all result in mottled leaves, yellow spots, yellow veining, stunted plants, and twisted foliage.

Our dahlia tubers are triple checked for any signs of disease before they make their way into an order. First, when we dig dahlia plants in the fall, any plants that show symptoms of virus or disease are disposed of. We like to leave a layer of dirt on the tubers to help them retain moisture, and we put them in sawdust to cure for a few weeks until we are ready to start cleaning and dividing.

Over the winter, our crew cleans and divides each and every tuber clump, checking carefully for any signs of disease. Since the tubers are dormant at this time and their eyes can be hard to see, we might choose to leave some tubers attached to each other. Rather than divide down to the single tuber every time, we leave any tubers that might otherwise be trimmed away. This lets our crew work more quickly, and it also gives us some insurance against breakage later on.

In the spring, every order is hand packed by a member of our team with a final visual check right before your order is shipped.