I agree that most of the plants that arrived bad were doomed from way before they were shipped. The best nurseries I have bought from had the highly secured, clearly used disease and fungus controls and used shipping measures that help along long trips. Whitman farms is a good example where she uses wet news paper for a moisture control and secures the package with a string. The other nursery I recommend is fast growing trees. I have never had a issue with fast growing trees so far. Jung seed is nice because of the cheap shipping. Most nursery I have bought from use FEDEX but Jung Seed ships through USPS and they are also good because they seal the plants. The bad nursery stories now. I bought from berries unlimited and the plants were so pruned the had no leaves and did not have any stems but the main stem and no leaves. That was a problem already caused by the nursery. I bought a blueberry plant from one green world that came with a horrible fungus disease. It came small and there was black going from the leaves to the bottom of the stem. It was a fungus issue caused by the nursery. They sent a mini blues blueberries opposed to pink popcorn as a replacement and the replacement was doing and has been perfect. I guess pink popcorn blueberries are just more prone to disease and fungus according to one green world. I bought from native foods nursery and the plants were not protected and the plant was very tiny so it likely should not have been shipped yet.
This is what I do to avoid the post office. I disliked going to the post office prior to the pandemic because I can’t stand crowds or lines. I do like interacting with the postal workers though.
- I use PayPal shipping as a previous poster suggested. It has the best rates that I have found and is the easiest to use.
- I print labels directly from PayPal shipping.
- I only ship using USPS priority mail for 2 reasons
a. The post office will deliver priority mail`flat rate boxes and envelopes for free
b. The post office will pick up any priority mail from my front doorstep for free. I pack my stuff, stick a label on it and set in on the porch. It’s that easy.
All I need to avoid the post office is a cheap printer and a cheap kitchen scale
To be fair to the post office its the only business in america that a politician can put its rival business owners (UPS and also Amazon) in charge of.
I mainly ship freight but also ship ups fed ex and usps and since march all of them have been running extremely slow and the amount of theft of gloves, alcohol, peroxide or any other disinfectant is utterly insane. I have had more stuff stolen in shipping this year than possibly the last 12 years combined? It maybe happened once a year before or less? I have only lost one package from usps, 3 from ups, 7 from fed ex and more than 20 times things stolen off freight.
Maybe I missed it but I don’t think anyone above mentioned that USPS can pick up larger packages if you schedule them on their website.
Personally about 90% of my scion shipments have gone out with the first class package rate. I just weigh it, look it up in the table, and put the stamps on, and put it in my mailbox. No need to schedule those pickups. Recently I have started to use pirateship.com as it is a bit faster overall, after looking up the rate one or two more clicks and you have a label.
Perhaps it would help to describe what makes a healthy tomato seedling and why that seeding is easily damaged if mistreated in shipping. I do my best to ship 8 to 10 inch tall seedlings that are growing rapidly. The reason is that a healthy rapidly growing tomato seedling is in the right growth phase to put into the ground and continue to grow into a large healthy plant before setting fruit. The right stage seedling is tender meaning that it does not have a stiff stem. The flip side of this, if you purchase tomato plants and the stem is already stiff, it means the plant has been held too long in a seed tray or has otherwise been handled in such a way that the plant has transitioned to the reproductive phase. I can ship stiff seedlings all day long with zero problems because the stems are tough enough to handle just about anything except crushing the box. Unfortunately, fruit production of these type plants is a fraction of what a healthy seedling should produce. So to reiterate, I am shipping tender seedlings in a box carefully adapted to the task. If the box is kicked or banged around too much, the seedlings hit the inside of the box hard enough to damage the plants including breaking stems and breaking off leaves. The way I package includes tape around the cell tray so that the root ball will stay in the tray. I use wooden sticks to hold the cell tray in place so that the box can be turned upside down without damaging the plants. Even with all possible precautions, I still have to replace a few shipments each year where some lugbrain drop kicked the box across the truck or threw it into the yard when delivered.
Pictures on this page show how I package plants to ship. Note that the box is ordinary brown cardboard. I changed to white boxes about 10 years ago to avoid overheating. Ordering plants
So just to confirm, everyone agrees that 10 oz and under (if not also higher) is totally acceptable for a first class small package with stamps and no printed label put in the mailbox?
I know when I’ve looked up prices on the USPS site before some first class mail options have been listed as only available at the post office, and those options (particularly for scion-size packages) have often been a few dollars cheaper than any other options.
First class only goes to 13 oz with USPS I believe. That is why if it is more than 1 pound it can be better to use a flat rate box or go to UPS or FEDEX at times. Sometimes ground or priority is still cheaper and that is where a Post Office or calculator will help .There are exceptions like media mail to the 13 oz rule too. The thing about first class mail and media rate is they are super slow. First class is 3-7 days expected and media mail is even slower though I don’t know the exact time.
I think first class does indeed go up to 13 oz, but there was at least one time when I tried to send a package by putting it in my mailbox with stamps on it, basing the number of stamps off of what usps.com said was the price for first class mail, but the mailman didn’t take it because it was supposedly over some limit for what can be mailed without coming into the post office even though I was able to send it first class from the post office.
True that…Patriot Act first major thing to take people’s privacy and rights from them. 13 ounce limit unless they get to ask all the ‘anything perishable, hazardous…rig-a-ma-role’ at the front desk while you are on camera. 
Starting in 2019 it is 10 OZ instead of 13. It is getting for limited as time goes on.
What happened with you was you used stamps. Stamps only go up to 10 OZ. After doing some reading I guess the way to get around that is the pre-printed label because it has more information on it than stamps.
But can anyone just print a first class postage label? I thought only labels for priority mail (and other more expensive options) could be purchased online and printed at home.
Pirateship.com will print first-class labels, at least it did for me a week ago :-). I don’t think the post office website will though.
Note my postman will pick up Priority packages with stamps on them, never tried anything too big but any scion package always made it out the door.
Like I and another person said if it is just pure stamps it will not make it out of the door when it goes over 10 oz. It was 13 oz before that Refer to this as the reason https://raysecur.com/usps-size-restrictions-2020/#:~:text=”Effective%20October%201%2C%202019%2C,and%20Post%20Office%20mail%20slots.” I think someone said it was due to the patriot act.
This site is the first time I’ve heard about pirateship. Have you (or anyone else) compared it to PayPal shipping or the actual usps website for rates? Are they the same price wise? Is there some other advantage to pirateship other than ease of use? Asking for posterity because this is a great conversation to have.
PayPal shipping is not very user friendly and offers few options. Pirateship is way better.
Wow. thanks for this link. I’m going to check this out!
How do you actually print the stamp and apply it to the package?
You print a label on a standard printer and use packing tape to stick it to your package.
You can also buy a label printer.
I’m assuming that your referring to Pirateship. The label seems simple enough but I don’t do PayPal. Can I pay by debit or credit card?