Cultivariable Status

If you have looked at this page before, you might need to do a forced refresh to see the latest version.  This also applies to product pages.  If you have looked at a product when it was out of stock, your browser may have cached that result.  In that case, you need to reload each product page to see the change in inventory.  That’s usually CTRL+F5 for Windows, Command+R for Mac, and F5 for Linux.

If you have placed an order and did not receive an email, please check your spam folder.  GMail, in particular, loves to classify my emails as spam.  You can also look up the status of your order or message me under My Account.  Also, the following domains do not accept emails from Cultivariable: @att.net, @bellsouth.net, @btinternet.com, @cambridgeclogs.com, @icloud.com, @mac.com, @me.com, @sbcglobal.net, @snet.net, @swbell.net, @wsu.edu

Beginning Jan 5, 2023, Cultivariable no longer offers international shipping.  USA orders only.

Mar 13, 2023: It was an unusually cold year here and in many places. That has slowed me down for a couple of reasons. There was serious damage to the oca, ulluco, and mashua crops. I am probably able to fulfill about 40% of orders for those products, but there is a lot to sort through, so that is a slow process. The fact that it has been cold elsewhere has slowed down shipping as well. Between the two, I expect that shipping will extend through the first two weeks of April this year. I am still doing my best to get packages out the door by the end of the month, but it may take a little longer than usual. As usual, I am going as fast as I can but probably not as fast as you would like. I am mostly harvesting and shipping yacon right now, since it is the most time sensitive crop. I will get back to sorting out the oca/ulluco/mashua mess once that is done.

Mar 9, 2023: I added some more Dosewallips, Kalaloch, and Quinault yacon to stock today. I am still digging, so there will probably be more to come before the end of the month.

Feb 15, 2023: The weather has been warm and dry enough that I have started the spring harvest.  That means that preorders and yacon orders will begin shipping soon to destinations that are warm enough.  The next batch of in vitro plantlets is coming along nicely and those will begin to ship the first week of March (although they will be shipping all month).  So, if you have been waiting to get started, it won’t be too much longer.

Jan 30, 2023: The next batch of shipping will probably happen the second week of February.  I have a bunch of unpredictable obstacles between now and then, including jury duty, so maybe they will work out in my favor and it will happen sooner.

Jan 20, 2023: An account is now required at checkout.  You can no longer check out as guest.  I know that some people find this annoying, but it only takes a few extra seconds and it ensures that I can communicate with you securely.  It also means that, even if you don’t get an email from me or it ends up in your spam folder, you can always log in to your account to read and respond to messages.  I hate to throw up more hurdles to ordering, but the tradeoff is worth losing an occasional order in this case.

Jan 14, 2023: Tomorrow, Jan 15th, will be the last day to order tissue culture plantlets for March shipping.  Orders placed after tomorrow will be for the June batch.

I will be rearranging and streamlining many products in the catalog.  This may make things messy for a little while.  I have received a lot of feedback that the current organization is confusing, so I hope to make things clearer.

Jan 10, 2023: Some people reported problems with the new waitlist feature.  If you were getting an error message when attempting to sign up for the waitlist, I think it is fixed now.

Jan 4, 2023: Happy new year!  I have caught up substantially on seed orders and the weather has warmed up enough that I should be able to ship some root and tuber orders this week as well.

After 10 years, I have decided to end preorders.  Instead, there is now a wait list option for products that are out of stock.  If you sign up for the wait list, you will be notified when the product is available again.  (These changes have no effect on existing preorders.)

Dec 21, 2022: Next shipping date will be Tuesday the 27th.  If you have an outstanding seed order, it will ship then.  The weather has been quite cold here, so there is currently no shipping of roots, tubers, or plantlets and I don’t have a prediction of when that will resume.

Dec 8, 2022: Things are messy and are going to be messy for a while yet.  The early arrival of repeated bouts of cold weather pretty much wiped out my fall schedule.  I won’t really be able to start unwinding the mess until the start of the new year.  I’m actually pretty optimistic overall.  I don’t think that I am going to have major problems with order fulfillment (except probably with ulluco), but everything is slowed down.  For example, I expect that I will have a lot more yacon to sell, but I can’t harvest it too early because it so perishable once cut and packed.  So, we’re just going to have to wait until at least February on that.  I lost the window for sending most of the October in vitro plantlet batch, which means that I have to transfer them all to new tubes and send them in March.  The only real bright spot right now is seeds, since the inability to do much else has allowed me to process a bunch of those.  So, this is pretty much a seed only business until Feb/Mar rolls around.  There may not be any more updates this year.  Look for things to pick up in January.  Happy holidays!

Nov 25, 2022: I will be catching up on the past couple weeks of orders this weekend.  There are some new TPS varieties in stock.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Nov 11, 2022: The cold weather has come and gone.  Unfortunately, it did bring an early end to the growing season.  The good news is that it did not freeze the soil very deeply.  This will probably be a bad year for oca, ulluco, and some of the later mashua varieties.  Yacon should be OK.  Yields will be lower, but I also did a larger planting this year.  I think I will probably be able to fulfill preorders that have already been placed, but I am not going to reopen them.  Once I harvest and inventory, I will just proceed right to standard orders.  That will take a while, so offerings are likely to be pretty thin though the end of this year, with the exception of TPS, which I am starting to process now.  It is not going to be a banner year, but that’s farming.  You win some, you lose some.

Nov 2, 2022: I have halted preorders.  The weather forecast is calling for an early season freeze.  Normally, I don’t even start to worry about frost until after Thanksgiving, but we have the potential for freezing weather into the 20s in the coming week.  The minimum consequence would be the end of growth for the year, which would reduce the crop by at least a third from usual projections, but the potential for a penetrating freeze also adds the possibility of damage to the crop in the ground.  In that event, I would probably have a hard time fulfilling the preorders that have already been placed, so the last thing I should do is accept more.  Predictions of cold weather here are wrong more often than right, so hopefully everything will be fine and I will reopen preorders in a couple of weeks.  If such an early freeze does come to pass, then it will take a while to assess the damage and preorders might not reopen before the end of the year.  Seeds remain available, as always.

Oct 24 2022: I have been busy harvesting and doing very little office work, so the backlog of orders and emails is pretty big right now.  We’re heading into a week of heavy rain, so I anticipate catching up over the next few days.  Thanks for your patience.

Sep 19 2022: Some Melosilla potato tubers are available now.  These are freshly harvested and dormant, so for winter/spring planting, but immediate shipment.

Sep 11 2022: Some Myatt’s Ashleaf potato tubers are available now.  These are freshly harvested and dormant, so for winter/spring planting, but immediate shipment.

Sep 10 2022: Boxes of potato seconds/culls are available now and probably until the end of November.

Aug 21 2022: Another office and shipping day is coming up tomorrow.  Delayed plantlet orders and any seed orders placed by noon tomorrow should all be shipping.  Next shipping will probably be another two weeks out.

Aug 8 2022: I am taking the first office day in about a month.  I hope to ship all the outstanding orders and catch up on emails.

Jul 2 2022: The next shipping day will be July 7.

Jun 17 2022: Orders placed through tomorrow will ship on Monday.  It will probably be another two weeks before the next batch ships.  It has been a wet year and the weeds are getting ahead of me.

May 7 2022: This year’s root and tuber crop is now sold out.  We are now in pre-order season for the 2022 crop.  Seeds remain available, as always, and in vitro plantlets are available for some varieties.

May 2 2022: Wow, orders are piling up more than I usually expect at this time of year.  Thursday and Friday will be the next shipping days.  All open orders should be shipped by the end of the week.

Mar 31 2022: A customer pointed out that I sent out some Chinese bugleweed labeled as Chinese sunchokes.  Whoops.  If you got one of these, you got the right plant; I just printed the wrong labels.

Mar 30 2022: The backlog is gone!  If you had an order placed prior to March 25th, you should, by now, have received it, received a shipping notification, or otherwise have been contacted by me to work out some kinks.  The only exception is for a few orders to Alaska, where it is still too cold.  If you are waiting on an order and none of those things has happened, please email help@cultivariable.com, because there is a problem.  New orders will ship weekly for as long as stock remains in marketable condition, which will be another month at the outside.  Focus now shifts onto the next harvest and I will begin adding preorders as this years planting starts to come up.  Thanks for your patience!  It is always a big relief to get to this point.

Mar 21 2022: Price increases have now been completed.  Single digit prices for roots and tubers are now history.  Preorders will still save you 10%.

Mar 14 2022: Shipping is going on hold for a couple days while I reorganize, inventory, and package more product for the final push.  I still expect to have all orders shipped by the end of the month, but it is going to be a close thing.

Mar 8 2022: I hate to do it, but I will be increasing prices again.  The price of everything that we buy is increasing fast.  I expect to increase the minimum price for tuber packets to $10.  Seed prices will be unchanged for now.  Price changes will probably happen around the end of this month.

Mar 5 2022: All of the sea kale that will be offered this year is now in stock.

Mar 4 2022: Cultivariable Standard sea kale, Yaquina Head sea kale, and Tartar bread plant thongs are now back in stock.

Mar 2 2022: Toleak potato tubers, Llumchuy Waqachi potato tubers, and Solanum cardiophyllum tubers are now back in stock.

Feb 23 2022: Because it sold out earlier than usual and I have been getting requests to preorder, I have opened yacon preorders for this year’s crop (delivery by spring 2023).  It always makes me nervous to do this since it can be confusing to open them this early, so I may change my mind and turn them off again if it creates work instead of reducing it.

Feb 21 2022: Dahlia coccinea and Yellow Gem dahlia seeds are now back in stock.

Feb 20 2022: Cruza 148 potato tubers, Gunter Blue potato tubers, Jancko Phinu potato tubers, and a few packets of Chiquilla Pitiquina potato tubers are now back in stock.  Cruza 148 and Gunter Blue were harvested early and are starting to sprout, so if you have more than a couple of weeks before planting time, I recommend storing them in the refrigerator.

Feb 18 2022: A little more Tatsolo ulluco, Moclips ulluco, Humtulips ulluco, and a tiny amount of Ozette, and Skagit Valley Gold potato are now in stock.  The Skagit Valley Golds were harvested early and are starting to sprout, so if you have more than a couple of weeks before planting time, I recommend storing them in the refrigerator.

Feb 17 2022: Some more Longview, OE Blush, and Pascou oca is now in stock.

Feb 11 2022: I have fixed some long running problems with email delivery that were causing particular problems with the forum.  If you previously tried to join the forum and had trouble, it should work now.

Feb 10 2022: ASAP/Weather Risk shipping is no longer an option.  Wow, was that ever a terrible experiment!

Feb 4 2022: Occasionally, Paypal changes a setting that disables shipping to international addresses.  I was just alerted that it happened again.  I have reset it to allow shipping (seeds only) to international addresses.  If you had problems checking out, it should work now.

Jan 27 2022: A little Bolivian Red oca is now back in stock.

Jan 26 2022: The oca selection is thinning out and I can see emails piling up asking about it.  Never fear, there will be more oca added to stock yet – it is just taking a long time to separate the good tubers from the freeze damaged ones.  Keep checking this page and I will update as I restock them.  There is no reason to wait to order – I combine orders for shipping whenever possible.  That is the reason I have free shipping –  so you don’t have to try to time your order and miss out on one thing while waiting for another to be restocked.

Jan 24 2022: Solanum x edinense tubers are now in stock.

Jan 22 2022: A small amount of Bogachiel yacon is now back in stock.

Jan 21 2022: A small amount of Kalaloch yacon and Quinault yacon is now back in stock.  There will not be more of either variety available until the next harvest.

Jan 20 2022: I’m shipping again and it looks like we will have favorable weather for west of the Rockies for a while.  Things are pretty backed up and new orders will probably have a 2-3 week wait, but the warm weather should be a big help in catching up.  Still only shipping seeds east of the Rockies, but I will start looking at shipping roots & tubers to the south by the end of the month.

Jan 15 2022: Chinese sunchoke, Dwarf sunchoke, Chinese bugleweed, Copalis mashua, Golden oca, and OE Blush oca are now back in stock.

Jan 14 2022: Ozette potato is now back in stock.

Jan 13 2022: Redshift oca is now back in stock.

Jan 12 2022: Sawamish oca and Sockeye oca are now back in stock.

Jan 9 2022: More oca is on the way, but it is coming slowly.  It takes forever to sort through it when a bunch of the tubers have been frozen and must be discarded.  I’ll probably be adding more into stock around the end of the week.

Jan 4 2022: Only seeds are currently shipping.  It looks like the weather will warm enough to resume root and tuber shipping to much of the west coast starting on Thursday the 6th.  It is still too cold for shipping roots and tubers east of the Rockies, even if you live in a warmer region.

An update on the big freeze…  I am still assessing the damage.  To my surprise, it appears that, although there was a lot of damage, most roots and tubers that were still in the ground had about 25% survival.  That is good, because although it is a financial loss, it means that I won’t have lost most varieties that I grew outdoors this year.  The news from our storage building is not as happy, unfortunately.  There, the major damage was in tissue culture storage, which appears to be a total loss, which is so discouraging that it is hard to express.  Some of the stored tubers clearly froze and are dead, while others didn’t, so that is good news, but it will take a while to sort through that – they don’t all show the extent of the freezing damage immediately.

Jan 3 2022: Chockalilum mashua, Hahamish mashua, Hoh mashua, and Satsop mashua are now back in stock.  That means that all the mashua varieties that will be offered this year are now available.  Inventories are not large and some of these are likely to sell out within the week.  There might be more added later, as I still have some mashua in the ground, but I don’t think it is very likely that it survived the big freeze.

Jan 2 2022: Ahahawat mashua is now back in stock.

Jan 1 2022: Happy new year!  Candy Cane mashua and Puca-anu mashua are now back in stock.

Dec 31 2021: Some Copalis mashua, Dabop mashua, and Lilliwaup ulluco are now back in stock.

Dec 30 2021: A little White Salmon oca, Humptulips ulluco, and Moclips ulluco is now back in stock.

Dec 28 2021: Some years, you just can’t catch a break.  We have had record cold temperatures here, colder than any time in the past 20 years.  I was not able to get everything harvested before the cold arrived and I expect that everything that remained in the field is dead, although sometimes tubers can survive surprisingly cold conditions.  It will take a couple of weeks to evaluate that.  There is worse news though.  We had a heater fail in our storage building and this led to the temperature dropping a bit below freezing.  It appears that everything in storage and in tissue culture may have frozen.  It is hard to tell how much is damaged at this point and it will probably take a few days to be able to sort through it.  I moved a lot of things into the house, and those should be fine, but I just didn’t expect the storage building to freeze.  In this climate, we never expect freezing indoor temperatures.  So, something bad has happened, I don’t know how bad yet, and it will probably take a week or so before I really know.  If the damage is total, that would be a catastrophe requiring a near reboot of the business.  So, cross your fingers.

Dec 14 2021: The last of the orders that are likely to arrive by Christmas shipped today.  Orders placed after this point are pretty certain not to arrive by Dec. 25.

Dec 8 2021: Okeho mashua, Suqualus mashua, and Wishkah oca are now back in stock.

Dec 7 2021: Roots and tubers are now starting to trickle back into stock and ordering is open again.  It will still take until January to get the majority of things cleaned, packed, and restocked, but I will add them as I go.

Nov 26 2021: Root and tuber ordering (with rare exceptions like wild potato tubers) is closed until harvest and inventory are done, probably through the end of 2021.  You can still order seeds.  Weather has been very wet and harvest is proceeding slowly because of that.  I have about as many preorders piled up as I feel comfortable with, so I will need to ship some of those before offering more.  There will be more mashua, oca, and ulluco available in January.  I am also in the midst of making some major changes to the site, including DNS and mail server changes, which means that there is a good chance that there will be some downtime for the site this month.

Oct 20 2021: Harvest is now ongoing, which means that order shipping is limited to heavy rain days.  Expect 2-3 weeks shipping time for in stock items.  Harvest should wrap in late November.  Many pre-order items are sold out, but I expect that a lot of those varieties will be available again after harvest and inventory have been completed in December.  We’re getting close to the maximum number of preorders that I allow to accumulate, so it seems likely that I will shut down new orders for roots and tubers sometime in December into January while I catch up on shipping.  As always, thanks for your patience.  Now and early spring are the most challenging times of the year, with a lot of competing demands.

Sep 4 2021: Seed packet prices have increased by ten cents to absorb increased cost of postage and materials.

Aug 12 2021: Potato tuber sales will work differently this year.  Due to an earlier than usual harvest, I will be shipping most potato tubers before winter.  Some varieties are available now and more will become available over the next two weeks.  More details: Important Notice about 2021 Potato Tuber Sales – Please read before ordering