I can see why certain nursery would want to charge more for shipping or more for a plant if they could. Most simply don’t do that though. I have bought plants this year which had prices skyrocket in price soon after I got them. Luckily I locked in my price with those nursery. I think I read on burnt ridge nursery that they don’t charge your card until it ships. There seems to be 3 models for nurseries. There is the pay now and lock in your price nursery like One Green World or Raintree. Then there seems to be the pay 50% to lock in your order and the other 50% later on like Trees of Antiquity. Last you have the pay later on ones that is Burnt Ridge. Burnt Ridge opened states on your website card will not be charged until your order is pulled (this is assuming you don’t pay with PayPal of course). Terms & Conditions | Burnt Ridge Nursery | Guarantee / Replacement Policy
Rick for 40 trees I’d recommend just learning how to graft to begin with if you have the time and just order rootstock and scions (or trade for them). You could buy a mighty nice grafting setup for what you intend to spend on trees.
I’m done buying trees from anybody, just scions now for fun. I’ll try grafting for a change. But I’m glad I did over buy at one time, I now have more citrus trees than I can eat. I bought them from Costco years ago for just $19 for a live tree, not bareroot.
I’m glad I bought a bunch too. I am more glad because I bought before all the prices were so jacked up for the most part. Grafting seems intimidating to me which is why I have never done it. For whatever reason buying a tree or plant and testing to see if they work in a food forest setting where I am plugging in multiple trees in small spaces seems fine to me but I don’t like the idea of grafting.
It’s my first time too, I did a bunch of graft recently, I think maybe some took, but who knows for sure. The new challenge is exciting to me, I may get carried away with it, maybe I have a tree with 32 different varieties, lol, I did see a picture of a tree with that many varieties, so that gives me an idea what to strive for.
Perhaps you should just give it a try by cutting scion wood that you already have and trying to graft to a tree that you already have. Basic grafting supplies are fairly inexpensive and take or fail, you won’t be out all that much.
That’s great advice.
Even with one tree, and it doesn’t have to be a fruit tree, you can practice grafting pieces of it back to itself.
For the past several years, I have been mostly buying rootstocks, not trees. Rootstock prices are also rapidly increasing — last year Burnt Ridge price for a bunch of 10 was $30 for most varieties, this year it’s $35. However, they were the only place I could find that sells Pyrus betulaefolia rootstock (used to graft Asian pears).
I’d much rather have an established rootstock, and scion wood, than a new tree.
Good thinking.
Thing is everything is increasing heavily in terms of gardening. In 2020 you could buy a grafted tree for 28 dollars from Raintree. Now expect 60 dollars. A bale of peat moss was 10 dollars at Home Depot and now expect to pay 16 dollars. Fertilizer has gone up due to oil prices and shortages. The reason for the price increase is because places selling it can afford to raise prices since they are still selling more of each gardening item than they could get in. It only makes sense rootstocks and scion will fallow. It does make you think about grafting as an alternative though. Say you only need one to 3 trees (you don’t need many if grafted onto standard rootstock like bet for pears) it will likely be better just to buy the 1-3 trees than grow the rootstock. 2 trees will be about the cost of their rootstock bundle in the case you stated. I do agree Burnt Ridge has some exclusive stuff. I have not gotten a order from them but they were the only nursery with self rooted Illinois Everbearing trees I saw so I bought from them.
Yes, you usually don’t need 10 trees, but that’s not a problem. Say, I buy a bunch of 10 rootstocks, which now costs $35 plus $29 S&H, for a total of $64. I graft them and grow for a year or two. Say, 7 out of 10 survive. I keep two best ones for myself and sell five locally at $40 per tree. That’s $200 to cover my expenses (price of rootstocks plus S&H plus costs of water, pots, compost plus maybe cost of scions if I needed to buy them, etc.), and I end up with two free trees of varieties that I want on a rootstock that I want. I don’t turn this into a business, so I usually don’t do more than 10 or 20 trees at once, but it’s nice to cover my expenses and get (practically) free trees.
A lot can be accomplished for cheap, if you have the time (and don’t put a dollar figure on that).
Agreed on a lot can be accomplished for cheap if you have the time but people only have so much time. You can spend 64 dollars on stitching for a needlepoint ornament or spends days or weeks stitching it yourself, you can spend hours every week cleaning our spend 110 dollars to have a person come out and clean, you can pay 10 dollars a meal minimum for going out or spend 30 minutes cooking yourself and the list can go on forever. Selling on places like Facebook marketplace or Craigslist takes a lot of time itself. I have sold on those myself and while the listing itself only takes a few minutes shifting through all the scammers and responding to the emails/texts is really time consuming. I think there are so many scammers on places like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace that Craigslist has warnings like always meet in a secure location and not to ship to people. For that reason I have stopped selling low value items on craigslist because it was not worth my time to drive somewhere and meet under 100 dollars unless it is taking up a bunch of space. I make 25 dollars a hour before taxes so if something sells for 40 dollars I may as well work an extra hour then schedule to meet, put extra money on gas and miles on my car. That is my situation though. Same with say stitching a needlepoint ornament. I would rather work a few extra hours and get the needlepoint ornament stitched then spend a week of my own time because it is a one time payment for 3 hours worth of work. Something like a repeated payment like cooking or cleaning I would rather do myself though. All people’s priorities though.
I don’t buy nor sell from craiglist nor eBay. Only recently I ventured to buy something on Etsy. It’s a disaster, I considered that’s donation to the Latvia people. Now I’m buying something again from Etsy but this time this person is in San Diego. We will see.
There’s absolutely no sense doing that if it’s a chore for you. It only makes sense to do if it’s something you enjoy doing anyway. I enjoy grafting and caring for trees, as I guess many other people on this forum do (otherwise they wouldn’t be here). I never even tried to do a needlepoint ornament in my entire life. And my hourly rate at work is $105.
I’m retired so my hourly rate is $0, lol.
A couple of years ago I sold some pomegranates in 4"x9" treepots on Etsy and eBay. Very rare and high-quality varieties. I rooted multiple cuttings for each variety (to make sure at least one is successful) and ended up with extra plants. A few people who bought them are very lucky.
In my case it’s peonies. Someone post about them after he bought from them, so I thought it’s safe. I never bought anything before that. I communicated to the seller after I received the peonies, she said she would refund me then she disappeared from Etsy.
Etsy, Ebay, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace etc. all have individual sellers and are not a big company where there is a central leader like Home Depot or Costco. Those websites can be like the Wild West for both sellers and buyers so both buyers and sellers are on edge. I seem to get consistent high quality of things from Etsy but have found measurements to be wrong for things like ornaments. Like I said there are people trying to scam people on the websites and places like Ebay will remove sellers that have bad reviews for the seller response. I have heard of people just flat out canceling items that are selling them because the buyer consistently leaves bad reviews and the seller does not want to take a chance. When I sold on craigslist I had people sending fake PayPal emails stating I was going to get more money the only time I was willing to ship and the first time I sold on Craigslist. On the buyer side I have been scammed on Ebay 2 times. Both times were pretty consistent on what happened though. I bought from a seller selling on a deal that was cheaper than expected from accounts that were either new or did not have many if any reviews. My advice for you on websites like Ebay and Etsy look at their reviews and look at how long they have been a member. If you see lots of positive reviews and it is an account with a long standing buy from them but if few reviews avoid them like the plague. Like I said I have never had a bad experience on Etsy though. I don’t buy things like plants on Etsy though. I use it for items I can clearly see are in order when they come like an ornament, a throw, decorations etc. Heck one person I gave a 3 star review on Etsy because they did not make a set of 3 ornaments right so one came broken in the mail and the seller just refunded the entire amount of the ornament set. Another seller that I bought a lot of ornaments from (I will say their name is MandatoryTreasures in case you wonder who this seller is) gave me free ornaments for buying so much from them and giving them so many good reviews. All sellers I have bought more than one item from that had shipping prices from have refunded me any shipping prices associated with the extra items. That is the experiences I have had with Etsy. I am very impressed with Etsy. To me Etsy is the new Ebay.
I think they had good reviews, I even saw several pictures of very good roots. When I received the roots they were not and that’s when I contacted her immediately. I did complain to Etsy and they didn’t response at all.