We discussed this in another thread. We should have a shortage of trees the next few years. Especially persimmons as they grew many cultivars nobody else grows. Cooke specialized in the home market so this hurts. They supply 4 to 500 independent nurseries. It was probably the only nursery who sold wholesale trees, mainly to the retail market. Most others the home market is secondary to the commercial market. Such as DWN, Adams, Mosher, etc. DWN makes their bread and butter selling almond trees to the commercial industry. They do have a large retail division and Cooke has been working with them to take over a good chunk of sales. Thanks DWN!! It will take a few years for them to develop the new stock. In the past DWN would let Cooke grow some cultivars for them and vice versa. An example of great cooperation between competitors.
L.E. Cooke will be missed in the bare root industry.
Thanks Jerry Brown and his California bureaucrats.
Anyone know if there is a way to get a specific tree directly from them before closing? They cultivate White Pakistan mulberry and I’m having trouble locating it elsewhere.
Some of the stuff in the letter sounds legit and some sounds like sour grapes. Blaming CA for having water restrictions in the face of severe drought? Implying CA is crazy for thinking agriculture wastes water? (When in many cases it was as farmers weren’t following best practices?)
There’s many many paragraphs about blaming others and a few paragraphs at the end about, “Oh yeah, maybe we could have done a few things differently, but we didn’t want to, so here we are.”
I clicked on the link expecting to feel a lot worse for them than I did. I feel terrible for the employees, but not really for the owners.
Never hurts to call and ask. Or ask your local nursery if they can order a few things for you.
Maybe you should call them and see if they can tell you of any nurseries they are selling to? A great example of how this hurts us, the cultivar will probably not be picked up by anyone. You can kiss this cultivar goodbye.
I looked around and Paradise Nursery has it for $125.00 Holy Moly!
Just Fruits & Exotics wants $45.00 but they are out of stock. I would call them and see if they can get more. That is a nice nursery. It was for sale (the nursery). Wonder if it ever sold? Some extremely unique stuff there.
I listen to the the weekly farm report out of California and the water situation is terrible. Many growers are concerned about it, and are adjusting crops as many are now not profitable. Great report!. I have never heard of such a deep bureaucracy No doubt even when times are good they have thousands of bureaucrats to support let alone the actual cost of the water.
That is very-well written. There’s no doubt L E Cooke has described their circumstances to a T.
Dax
This is sad, modernization is destroying the ability to have the best varieties, and the best quality produce as it is. It’s was already obvious that California is getting too expensive to live in and to run a business in as it is. L E Cooke has actually left out some of the greatest costs there are to running a nursery in California due to environmental laws. I wonder if these new laws punishing nurseries for using water go after hotels, resorts and people who have pools, they waste a lot of water when there are beaches. luckily there are people like us to help preserve things.
They did a lot of things wrong, I agree with that. The water regulations didn’t help, but it is more than just that. A perfect storm, it happens. The loss of independents in recent years does not help. Also they will still be doing stuff, just not trees.
The cost of fuel, energy, water. has increased. What’s a shame is all that or most could have been dealt with, it was not.
I understand Cooke’s water issues. Even though we had a great season last year, Northern California has had about one third of normal rainfall so far this season and snow is almost non-existent. Our groundwater will never recover.
The remarks regarding the business climate is spot on, I suspect they just got tired of fighting it. Many businesses are closing or moving to friendlier states. But no worries, recreational marijuana is going to save us.
I agree, been there done that, got the t shirt. Not on that scale, I owned a restaurant, and I thought I was in a war zone. So glad I sold it.
And don’t bogart that joint my friend, we’re going for recreational too on the November 2018 ballet, it will pass.