Rip City Dahlia Tubers - Costco Package - Longfield Gardens - February 2026

This weekend, we popped into Costco and to my surprise (delight?), they had their Longfield Gardens Spring bulbs (tubers) up front in the metal racks.  Amongst the peonies and ranunculus were a number of packages of Dahlia tubers.  I've posted about the tubers that I've already bought. Here's my Bonny Blooms order, which has seven total tubers.  Pairs of Crichton Honey, Peaches-n-cream and Brown Sugar and a single Bell's Palermo.  All of these are 'new to me'.  And, here is my second order from Longfield Gardens that has five more (new to me) varieties.  So, that's nine new varieties that I have to find homes for in the beds.  Seven + ten = 17 containers to pot-up in addition to what I stored over Winter in Saran Wrap.

But, that didn't stop me from looking over the rack at Costco.  And, based on a couple of things, I ended up picking up this eight-pack of Tubers.  I'll post about each of the two varieties in separate posts.

Here's the front of the package - showing the two varieties:  Rip City and Saint Martin.  

First, let's look at the Rip City overview on the back of the bag: 

The thing that jumped out at me on these were the height(s).  This Rip City is listed as under 40" - which were some of the shortest heights of all the tubers offered at Costco.  

Here is the Longfield Gardens product listing page for these that includes this description: 

British dahlia enthusiast Sarah Raven calls Rip City her favorite dark-hued dahlia. Bred in the US, it's a strong grower, with 5 to 6" blossoms on long stems. The velvety flowers are almost black in the center, softening to maroon and wine-red at the outer edges. A breathtaking cut flower.

Emphasis, mine.  

Pair that with a not-to-tall height and what's not to love.  Note:  I had not come across Sarah Raven before, so I quickly began to look around¹.  

Floret also has this dahlia in their library.  They say:

Low-growing plants are covered in rich chocolaty-red, slightly nodding blooms that dance in the breeze. A fantastic choice for flower arranging and striking in the garden. Pinch: when 12 in tall.

Low-growing.  "Striking".  Easy...add to cart, right? 

There are four of these in this bag, so that takes the 17 one-gallon containers that I need to start tubers (indoors) and increases it to 21 one-gallon containers.  Last year, I planted 21 tubers out, too.  Many of those are 'split-able', pending their viability of surviving this Winter.  That means...at a minimum I am going to need about 50 one-gallon containers to fill this year.  That is A LOT.  Eeek.  Time to do an inventory of what I have on hand

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^{1. She's a cut flower expert (influencer??) in the UK.  And, I've now begun to discover more about her.  She sells dahlia tubers (naturally), so I now have about eight tabs open in my browser looking at her site and Instagram handle. ↩}