When I ordered from Indiana Berry in the past the plants were great – mostly large healthy roots and plants – and most are still growing in my yard – multiplied by some. I think this is an especially tough year for greenhouses/plant growers with everything related to the coronavirus.
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You’re right maybe we should give them a break. Each state may be different on what they can do. If you need 10 employees but have to suspend work, no doubt the plants are going to suffer. And when you have three answering phones, and now you have one answer in between maintaining the plants, one might get annoyed easily.
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Glad yours look good. I’m pretty sure mine will make it, blackberries are fairly hard to kill although I do think I killed some that I traded for this year. High 70s one day and low 20s the next hurt the new plants really bad if they are not dead. @Drew51 You are right about taking it easy on some of these nurseries. I probably shouldn’t have bashed them this hard, who knows what hardships they are going through.
Yeah i also feel this way, Many essential employees are overworked and stressed out and dealing with a lot of angry people that are upset about life and things. If they employed a lot of elderly people they could be paying them to be staying at home and not getting any PPP money since they are not a extremely large corporation or banksters. Every person i know that is working has had an extraordinary amount of unreasonable outbursts from people and are all pretty done. In the past i have gotten very good plants from indiana berry
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I guess I’m a little different. I could have looked past them sending me the wrong plants or even dead plants, but being really sorry about it, having great customer service, and trying to fix the issue. I can’t really look past rudeness and just plain poor customer service. My father taught me never to take a bad situation you are in out on another person. That’s good advise. I have worked with customers for over 25 years and I find that it’s not hard to follow my father’s advise if you are a “customer service” related type person and don’t take issues personally. If you are the type of person who takes things personally, you are not meant for customer service. Perhaps they should let who ever they have answering the telephone do a different job. By the way, that was not the first time I had called. The time before wasn’t as bad, but the person still didn’t seem happy to be answering the phone. I’m just not interested in companies with poor customer service.
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No glad you did. I’m still not giving them a pass. The jury is still out. I ordered from them this year. I ordered 2 blueberry plants, 2 raspberry plants, and 2 rhubarb crowns. The crowns are huge! The blueberries are about a foot tall and look OK, not great. The raspberry plants are the smallest I have seen from them, but still OK. I ordered a blackberry from Burpiee and it was 2 inches tall. None of the plants were that bad. The 2 inch plant was growing though, not dormant. And it is alive and well and I’m fine with it. It’s probably a tissue culture. I don’t care much about size. I actually prefer really small trees. i would rather shape them. They survive better too. The larger the tree the greater the transplant shock. I got a big nectarine tree, and I’m hoping it makes it. I have a feeling it will not. it was so light, even though the cambium was green, the tree felt dehydrated as it was so light. Oh the Wowza is growing back. It’s kinda ;like I just got it. A small plant. But the roots should really be large now. So cool! My Carmine Jewel and Juliette are about to open blooms. I should get some fruit from Juliette, maybe not? Often the first bloom produces no fruit. It did have about 10 flowers last year that produced no fruit. So now it has 50 or more, hopefully it will be fruitful.
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I hope all your plants make it. With all mail ordered plants I always try to take pictures of them after they arrive, and make notes about planting dates. If the need arises I can ask for a refund or replacement and have things to back me up if they get testy.
That said I’ve ordered from Indiana berry for years, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, grapes and currants. Everything has been in good condition and everything has grown fine. I still have everything I’ve planted from them except some grapes and blackberries that I lost to winter kill.
I just got some black currants, white currants, and blueberries from them today. The only complaint was the lack of packing material, but there was still moisture in the bags. I moistened the roots and put some damp paper towels in there since I won’t get to planting them until the weekend.
Black currants
White currants
Blueberries
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Good showing. All look fine to me.
If you wanted ‘instant blueberries’ you’d have to get 3 year olds…
which one of my plants from Burnt Ridge was.
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I ordered 6 blackberry plants from these folks and received them about a month ago. They arrived in good shape and all six are putting on growth once they adapted to the new soil. My experience was positive and on par with other online sources I have tried. Must have been having a bad day.
The majority of the plants I ordered are doing really well and growing. The blueberries finally leafed out. There are two gooseberries that aren’t showing life, but the cambium is still green so I’m hoping they still leaf out.
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I ended up losing 2 Osage and 1 hinnomaki yellow gooseberry out of the 10 plants I planted, none of them ever put on leaves. 7 out of 10 isn’t terrible, but I am more satisfied with the plants and customer service from other places for my future orders.
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Old thread I know, but I did a search for Indiana Berry review and this one popped up.
I ordered 7 various elderberries from Indiana Berry in January and they arrived today. I had requested an April 18th ship date and they were shipped on the 19th. All had very nice root systems and appeared to be well packaged with no broken roots or stems. They provided a shipping notice, as well as UPS updates. I’d order from them again based on my experience with them this year.
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I’ve ordered from them several times. Never had a dead plant but some of the plants were a little on the small side. I ordered one currant from One Green World so far and it was about three feet tall upon delivery. IB were only about 8 inches to a foot tall for the varieties I received.
How did the costs compare between the two?
IB was $10 for small currant. Upon arrival the roots were wrapped in moist shredded newspaper and all was well. OGW was $12.95 for a monster plant shipped in a similar fashion, however I have come to find that OGW does the best packing of live plants compared to any other nursery I’ve ever ordered from. That being said west cost shipping was a little higher for me.
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I bought strawberry plants from them this year and I think they froze during shipping. They sent me healthy replacement plants right away. I will be a return customer for sure.
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I have ordered from IB a handful of times over the years and always received good service and plants. Shipping was also when I requested. I didn’t order from them during the pandemic.
I did order from Pense during the pandemic because everyone else was sold out and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get anything, but they did come through eventually. So late that most of the plants couldn’t establish in the heat though. I got the feeling that they had 5 people doing the work of 20 so I just took it as another pain of the pandemic.
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My order this year was good (currants and gooseberries) they were small but are growing well. Last year was very good, with the exception of the grapes which I replaced this year with stock from Northeastern Vine (my goto for grapes). Indiana Berry is great for rasberry and strawberries (my blueberries, rhubarb, asparagus, etc. from them were all good). If I find more room next year I will be sending them another order.
Ordered 8 Blueberries over the winter from Indiana Berry and 100 Strawberries. Planted all plants on April 28. 7 of 8 Blueberries have leafed out and appear very healthy. The strawberries have all taken off as well. The strawberries have went into a variety of planting situations as well. Some in raised beds, some in a tower garden, some in ground, and even some behind a tree in pretty much full shade. All are doing great.