Id say at this point I’m still relatively new to gardening. I started two years ago but I’ve been aggressively buying plants, propagating many of the cultivars I like and growing my garden as a whole. This season I purchased a yellow and red hinnomaki gooseberry from a nursery, both were 1 gallon pots. I dug up my area to place them in the ground, removed them from the pot and the dirt immediately fell off resulting in what is seen in the picture. I do understand that during this time of year, bare roots are often potted up for sale because they’ve broken dormancy. But nowhere in the description on the website did it mention them doing that. Am I overreacting? is this normal? I’ve never purchased plants this wimpy in a 1 gallon.
Thank you
I had that happen last summer when I bought a tree from a local one-man-show nursery. The cool thing is that he warned me that they had just potted them up. When the tree failed to take, he gave me a credit and I bought some other things. So my takeaway is that if they are up front that they are really selling a bareroot plant with a pot and some soil, and stand by their product, it’s ok. But if they don’t say anything, then the assumption is that it was potted up the previous year and should have an established root system.
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That little twig was in a one gallon pot? Interesting. What nursery did you buy it from?
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Bare root does not mean the root system is small. That is a common misnomer. When I got my cherry trees they had bigger roots than I ever would have in a pot. That being said if I buy something in a 1 gallon pot I expect it to actually be one gallon. The same thing happened to me where I bought a vanilla orchid off etsy and they stated it was in a 4 inch pot but it turned out it was just a small cutting that was barely rooted. A 1 gallon pot is not that big all things considered too. That being said it does look like they sent you way less than you asked for. It will likely reach the one gallon mark or bigger in a year though. Plant roots generally grow fast and it does not take long for most plants to reach 1 gallon.
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@elivings1 that’s a really good point about bare root doesn’t mean small root system … I’m still pretty new to this and need the reminding. I bought 3 bare root trees last summer mail order and only 1 took. I didn’t try to get my money back, so it turned out to be an expensive tree. I chocked it up as a learning experience.
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So true. I purchased a jeanne gooseberry bareroot from a different seller for $8.50 (Whitman Farms) and I was shocked by the huge root system for that price.
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I’d prefer not to say just yet. I’m going to email the nursery and see the response.
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I have received worse than that in the past. Go to pull it out and a stick pulls out with no roots. Yours probably has enough root to make it. The second pic looks great.
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Obviously, it’s your prerogative if you want to name the nursery or keep it to yourself and I’m truly not offended. 
The purpose of what I am about to say is purely for conversation and not to offend you. I don’t see how it helps anyone to keep the practices of any business to oneself. It’s good to know the practices of the places that you buy from ahead of time so that you might know what you might be able to expect. If you have ever done any type of research on any product and gotten opinions or read reviews about said products or the business that sells those products… well there was only one way for you to get those opinions or reviews and that was by other people who bought the products telling about their experience with the products and/or the company that sells the products. I, personally, will keep no secrets for businesses. Nothing personal against companies… it’s just business. Do a good job and I’m telling people do a poor job and I’m telling people. I also like to let people know when a company does a poor job when it comes to the product, but they make it right. That’s good customer service. I can deal with that. What I don’t deal with is poor products and poor customer service. But that’s just me.
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I agree with farmgirl. It’s good to know who sends out poor product. If you search I have reviews of most all of the major nurseries. This is how we judge who to order from.
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I fully agree but I always wait to see the response from the company and in this case I’m glad I did. The owner emailed back and was very apologetic and explained that a new employee took inventory and mistakenly listed them online. He said I could keep the plants and get two others from his nursery or just a refund. Mistakes happen, as long as this wasn’t purposeful I have absolutely no problem with how everything worked out.
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Dave’s Garden has reviews on a whole host of online nurseries:
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That’s awesome, but people still don’t know who has this great customer service. Do you rely on others to give you their opinion about products and services but don’t reciprocate? It’s fine if you do… I was just pointing out that that’s what could be going on in this situation.
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Daves Garden is super! I post reviews on the WatchDog and I don’t usually buy from any nursery without reading the reviews there first. That said, I did give Burnt Ridge a chance this year because even though they have poor reviews over there, there were a lot of people here that said that their experience wasn’t bad. The plants that I got were mostly good. I have one Elderberry that still hasn’t leafed out. I guess I’ll have to see how their customer service is next week.
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Nice that the seller gave you a refund.
Just curious though? Did they list it as being a “1 gallon sized plant” ? Or did they list size at all? Was it cheap or expensive?
I think there is quite a difference between buying a “size unspecified, assumed small” And recieving a small plant in a large pot. (free soil and pot id consider)
And buying a 1 gallon sized plant, and recieving a young cutting in a large pot.
Btw the roots are plenty for such a small plant. I would not be worried about the amount of roots, compared to the rest. It’s just a young/small cutting.
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The wording was simply “1 gallon”. It was just under $15 which I think would be a fair price for a true one gallon. But yes I agree, if it were just an otherwise unspecified size and i received free soil and a pot I wouldnt complain lol.
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In the last few years I have seen even highly rated nurseries send out crap I tend to get my best looking plants from other growers I met here or elsewhere.
I’m glad I have most of the plants I need as the few I ordered this year looked bad. One Green World I ordered two trees last year and one this year. All looked great. The bare root I received this year leafed out in two weeks. They were extremely expensive. Besides that I was happy with the purchases. Nice looking healthy bare root trees. All other purchases were a disappointment.
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I prefer to buy bare root plants, because i can get something with a large root system without paying for gallons and gallons of dirt to be shipped. Also, potted plants are often root bound.
I mean, i buy my annual spring flowers and vegetable seedlings in pots. But for more mature or larger woody plants, bare root is my preference.
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I had the same experience with Daves Garden Watchdog with Grow Organic Peaceful Valley. They were the only online sellers of dwarf Utah Giant cherries and they had a flat rate shipping of 30 dollars so I decided to take a chance on them. I am glad I did because everything leafed out. Only complaint I have with them is it always seems like my order just shows up at my door one day so generally I only notice the package is there when I head out or come home from work and there is a package waiting for me. Either way they are rated as something like a 2 star on Daves Garden but something like 4 or 5 on Google. The people complaining on Daves Garden with them seems to be the customers that had their tree leaf out but the refused to protect them when a frost came and so they died. It was their fault for not protecting them and they did leaf out so they did not refund them. As a result it seemed a lot of people left bad reviews on Daves Garden. I generally take reviews with a grain of salt and evaluate what they are saying. I work as a customer service/sales associate at USPS and people have given my office many bad reviews when it was nothing I could control. Some examples is when I ran out of photo paper I emailed everyone to get photos ahead of time and some people still came without photos and told me they never got a email which I quite literally went down the list and emailed everyone but one still left a bad review. Another example is someone did not have a ID for me to identify them so they left a bad review because I could not do their passport based on what they gave me.
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I agree with you. I always try to read between the lines and weigh out what the reviewer is saying. The customer is not always right, lol. I’ve also read many reviews in which the customer apparently misunderstood the role of the product or company that they were dealing with. One that I see all the time is when a reviewer gives a product 1 star rating and their only complaint is about the delivery driver! 
Huh? They are supposed to be reviewing the product or seller not the delivery driver. There’s likely a place for them to voice their concerns about the issue that they had with the delivery driver, but it’s not in the review section under the product in question. Not sure why some people don’t understand that.
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