2024 Orders and Openings Chat

Juliarugula · 2023-08-01T22:12:46+00:00

I thought today might be a good day to start the 2024 thread, since I was browsing through the newly rolled over DahliaAddict site. Has anybody heard if Cle...

Juliarugula

I was wondering if anybody was able to get a tuber of Fern Ridge Pride? I know there were some members of the forum who were looking for it. I was sound asleep during opening (EST here) so I don’t know if it was stocked or not (it showed as “sold out” when I got to the site this morning).

Not looking for it for myself - I just noticed the listing and thought of this group and so was curious…

Teddahlia

Fern Ridge Pride MD Y.-W.Bic 1990 wilson,r
We visited the Fern Ridge farm before it closed. It was not too far from Eugene, Oregon on the road to the West and not far from Rivers Dahlias. No one was there and we wandered around. We grew several of their varieties including Fernridge Pride.

calico20hill

BarryO I just happened to come on talk about Dahlia Del being open so I checked them out this afternoon and found some of the older tubers I needed replacements for. Not trying for the ones everyone else wanted but happy to have 2 American Dawn coming to grace my garden again! I ordered about $90 worth and half an hour later I had a fraud alert on my brand newly replaced credit card! I guess anytime I order out of the area they are going to guess it is fraud...they sure don't know me very well, LOL. (It is all centrally located now, not the small community bank where I knew everyone). Anyhow, I got that one straightened out and the order should go through, but it seems as though if it isn't one thing blocking us it is another! I still like the written check mailed along with an order that we used to do! I never had those refused by my bank .

DarcyD

Bonny Blooms did a small restock today.

calico20hill

North Cascades Dahlias did a limited opening this evening and I was actually able to order a few without all the panic. It made a nice experience. I wasn't trying for all the newest Bloomquist dahlias and I think that helped. What I was looking for was some that I thought would be good seed makers for my patch.

I hope their next opening goes as well...they hit the sweet spot for me!

MIDahlias

Grrr, I'm still considered a "previous customer" with Madelyn's but this is the second year I couldn't buy just one tuber when they opened for their VIP Pre-Sale. I think I'm fast, but not fast enough. I suppose it's a sign I don't need anymore. 😒

bloomhjelm

I did the usual pre login, pre filled address and cc, refresh, quick sticks fingers to check out, and still no dice. Madelyn's was very tricky.

blown_dry

restock at lobaughs.
https://lobaughsdahlias.com/product-category/dahlia/

calico20hill

Thanks for the word on Lobaughs. I was able to pick up 6 new ones, including 2 Allen's Smoky Skies. I have had funky foliage on my the last 2 years and hope these will be cleaner looking. I do love the flowers. I also added Jac's Allemande, Stillwater Backy and Versa...(yes, Ted, because it has a nice dark back on the petals!) I don't remember what dahlia # 6 is.....

NCDahlia

thanks, i was able to get a few also on the restock. Kidd’s Climax, maks betty lynn. did not get BQ Jean I actually had 2 pot tubers that did good. I left them in the pots with dirt they store better will see tubers in march still firm on the outside of the pot.

cmcramer

Am I understanding Lobaugh's 're-stocking' process correctly? The entire inventory is not re-stocked and made available at one time, but only a few dozen varieties, perhaps, are made available at any point in time. So if today I want to buy newly re-stocked Variety X, but Variety Y and Variety Z are not re-stocked yet.....and might not be for weeks....what do I do? Place numerous orders, each with shipping charge? Nah, that can't be! Wait until all varieties I desire are made available and hope none are sold out? Sure would be easier if suppliers would use one date to present the tubers they have for sale this year. OR Supplier keeps a running tab (with credit card payment info) for a few weeks as new tubers become available and Buyer adds them to his Order. what's the best way to by from these 'staggered' openings?

MissyWeitzel

cmcramer I'm pretty sure in the case with Lobaugh's they weren't intending on having a 'staggered' opening. It seems more like they are dahlia growers that either aren't sure how to manage a sale on a website and have everything go live at a specific time or their website doesn't allow them to do so. On the back end of my website there are a couple ways to do it. I could just make my tuber page or entire website password protected while I list all my inventory numbers and then take the password off at sale time. The way I do it is the day before my sale I make all my products invisible, enter my inventory for each, then schedule each to go live and reappear at the same time - whatever time my sale is supposed to start. But I used Squarespace to build my site and all that kind of functionality is built in. A lot of other farms use Shopify and other website building hosts. These website hosting businesses make it way easier to manage sales like this. Lobaughs may have had a website built for them or they may be on a different platform entirely that doesn't work that way.
Several years ago before dahlia madness hit, the way they run their sale was totally fine. They were kind of ahead of time by even having a website that accepted orders at all, since many dahlia farms mostly had catalogs and order forms to mail in even 5 or 7 years ago. If a farm had a website, it was usually just an online catalog, not meant to take sales. Dahlia madness has changed all that and people who are new to growing probably don't realize that most of the websites for dahlia farms that have been around a long time are likely operated by the growers who built the sites quite a few years ago and have websites that just aren't built to handle CRAZY. It took me so many hours to build my website and online catalog and if I had to start over on a new platform I'm not sure I would have the energy to do it, especially after digging and dividing so many dahlias.

blown_dry

cmcramer I think you have it correctly. If you want to order everything available from Lobaughs you may have to make multiple orders. Presumeably suppliers do things they way they can manage best with other demands on their time from other crops or responsibilities we know nothing about, and our job is to decide if those terms work for us or if we shop elsewhere. Combining multiple orders and refunding shipping sounds very expensive in time and energy and I'm not surprised that many suppliers can't offer it.

I can't find anything on Lobaugh's site about combining shipping. But that would be sweet!

MIDahlias

In my experience with LoBaughs, Wayne doesn't stagger. He releases everything at once. Tuber inventory is tough. If he has more of something as time goes on, he'll add it to the inventory.

I was excited to learn he added some more yesterday, not the two I was hoping for.

He is one of the few that does combine shipping. He's an old school seller using new technology. A+++++

cmcramer

29 out of 40 on first web page are 'out of stock.' If that is not part of a staggered opening, then they had a difficult tuber year...

Can I ask this, then? Could someone recommend a good Supplier who sells many Clearview tubers? Many of them appeal tome. Thanks!

JillAnne

@cmcramer this is sadly why people talk about “dahlia wars” now. The restock was not all varieties. He did have all of them listed as far as I can tell on his opening day a few weeks ago. I was very lucky to buy two Clearviews that are popular (Neive and Jennae) but both of those sold out in moments. I missed Whitney as that sold out in moments too. I emailed with him before the sale as I had some questions and he struck me as a heck of a nice guy and very organized.
Older Clearviews will be easier to get. Dahlia addict is your best bet of course. Trading is good as well. Googling sellers or looking on instagram to find sellers not listed on dahlia addict is higher risk, but their sales often aren’t as crazy. You may know this already, but don’t order from Amazon. Etsy is a mixed bag and I personally avoid, but some have success

cmcramer

Plenty of suppliers, and plenty of beautiful dahlias available, for sure.

Teddahlia

In the old days, Dick Parshall of Clearview used to sell his own varieties and sell new introductions from small growers who needed a place to sell. Now he depends on Wayne Lobaugh to sell his varieties. When we started selling our seedlings , Phil Mingus sold them for us.

Teddahlia

I may switch over to a procedure where I charge no shipping on order initially but will state that I will invoice the buyer for the shipping and if they do not pay, I would not ship. I end up with multiple orders from numerous people and I print all the orders and then spend some time alphabetizing them in order to identify. the multiple orders. Then I marked on the associated orders, how much to refund in excess shipping. Tedious and I do not like to do it his way. Solution one: create a Paypal button for shipping costs and the person would use that on the first order and would not use it on subsequent orders. Solution 2: Jack up prices and offer free shipping on all orders. Solution 3 : Invoice everybody for shipping after all orders are in. Or perhaps there is another solution someone can propose.

SteveM

Teddahlia Solution 2: Jack up prices and offer free shipping on all orders.

#2 is probably the way I would go. The huge demand for dahlias makes ordering a challenge for both sides.

MissyWeitzel

Teddahlia when I did fall shipping this year I had a special checkout form on my website enabled with 2 check boxes that the customer had to click agree to before they could add anything to their cart. I wanted to make sure they knew my terms for this different sale (as opposed to spring shipping) and just double check they knew when the tubers were shipping. Even though it was clearly stated on each product FALL SHIPPING I wanted to just fend off as much potential problems as possible. It went really smoothly! Perhaps you could do something like that to make sure the customer knows they need to add shipping to their (first) order or the order would not be sent.

NCDahlia

Paypal button for shipping I think it can charge on where its going - , do not refund shipping is the easiest solution - perhaps combine the order but don't refund the extra cost for the buyer. That is time out of your busy day. The extra cost can go to the "you create dahlias everyone wants to grow"

Further I have advocated you charge minimum $40 for new intros. If Swan Island charges then why not you? The highly sought after ones (such a HH black cherry , HH moonsong) and tuber count adjust accordingly. Say $20 / $25.

I do like the look of that pink one on the left. Also do you still HH Bashful? I do not know any other seller that has it. Thanks figured I would ask.

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