When I order online I like to find the best deals and/or family-operated nurseries. A few weeks ago I ordered two 6-7ft tall pawpaw seedlings for $126 + shipping from preppergardens.com. Today I got an email from both Prepper Gardens and TyTy that my order has shipped. I guess they must have some kind of drop-shipping affiliation with TyTy. The same size trees on the TyTy site are $100 each, so I apparently saved $80 AND shipping was only $35.
Whether this truly was a deal or not depends on how much you hate TyTy and what kind of condition the trees show up in, but I figured I would share this info in case someone else wants to take a gamble with potentially cheaper pricing via preppergardens.com.
Prepper Gardens 1909 US HWY 82 W STE 9 #235 Tifton, GA 31794
TyTy 4723 US-82, Ty Ty, GA 31795
I have only ordered one thing from Prepper Gardens… thorned blackberries and they sent me canes without thorns.
As of right now they will not respond to email on the problem.
OMG. Sorry, you’ve been ‘had’. Absolutely NOT a good deal. Any association with TyTy is a disaster in the making.
Looks as though TyTy has come up a new ‘name’… back in the day, they had dozens… usually some variation on ‘Aaron’s’ or ‘Patrick’s’ This-n-That Farm (Patrick’s Fig Farm, Aaron’s Daylily Farm, etc. ) I see they’ve branched out now to capitalize on the current political climate… ‘preppers’.
What you’ll likely get are two unnamed, bareroot seedling pawpaws (if you’re lucky… 'cause they might not even be pawpaws…) that may even arrive dry/dead, with no roots.
It’ll be a battle to ever get a response, much less your money back or a replacement (they’ll send the same quality dead stuff!)… but they’ll make you wait to see if they sprout - and will tell you that you didn’t handle them properly - and still will require you to ship the dead plants back to them, on your own dime.
Sorry, there’s not a GRAFTED pawpaw(or any other fruit tree) that I’d pay $100 for… you can buy quality container-grown seedlings for under $20 bucks all day long… container-grown, grafted selections for under $50.
Ok after a couple of days not hearing back from Prepper Gardens… i decided to call the number. The person that answered said TyTy…
If you click the ‘About Us’ - We have over 12 years of industry experience, we are members of Pi Alpha Xi (Horticulture Honor Society) at UGA, and we are Preppers at heart. We strive to provide the best plants and customer service for all of our customers.
A quick internet search says they have been dishonest for over 16 years according to the below forum posts.
i have read for many years to avoid TyTy but i didnt do my homework before ordering from ‘Prepper Gardens’… they are the same.
I had a bad experience ordering from TyTy in 2019 where I had to get the GA BBB involved and they made it right. Last fall they were running a sale and, while I normally avoid them, having them shipped to my grandma’s country home instead of me buying smaller trees that fit in my sedan was appealing enough to go for it. They ended up being decent trees (if they survive), but I would still not recommend dealing with them.
If anyone ever goes to Dave’s Garden for the ‘skinny’ on nurseries/plant sellers that they’re unfamiliar with… you’ll find no reviews for TyTy or any of its numerous pseudonyms. Reviews at DG were so overwhelmingly and scathingly negative - except for fake reviews submitted by TyTy personnel themselves - that TyTy threatened legal action… and DG acquiesced, rather than be drug through a costly court proceeding.
Wish I’d ‘captured’ some of the reviews - both negative and (incredibly unbelievably) positive.
I placed ONE order with them, back around 1996… and learned my lesson…
I’ve not looked at their website recently, but they used to have some entertainingly bizarre… ‘artsy’ displays of fruit and ‘models’ posing with fruit supposedly harvested from the trees/plants they were offering.
Its a very bizarre business model. That i cannot understand.
Step 1- Be in business as TyTy Nursery for over 20 years and the internet is FULL of bad reviews, not counting social media. How can you ship the wrong stuff and ship bad plants for 20 years? Why? Its like whoever owns it is obsessed with messing with people and causing conflict.
Step 2 - Create alias companies. I get that the name TyTy has been ruined and that if they divide the bad word among their many aliases that they would have a chance… but they do the same thing at the alias companies.
I can understand if they were selling knockoff chinese purses or tools or electronics… but why do it with plants?
Whoever owns it has to be aware that something is wrong… You have to know that when you send someone an apple tree that ordered a peach tree that its gonna cause problems. And they do that on a consistant basis… year after year after year.
I think they may also own Caribbean Garden Seed. I have an order with them also. They take your money and you may or may not get your plants. There are over 100 google reviews and social media reviews of people that got caught in their web. Also on the BBB site the exact same kind of reviews as TyTy
If not for my chase for some obscure plants i would have never ordered from them.
So TyTy, Carribbean Garden, Prepper Gardens etc etc etc - almost all reviews are the same- They send the wrong plants, the wrong seeds, and often send dead plants… after that the nightmare begins.
I bought 4 blueberry plants from ty ty in 2019… my first experience with them. They looked awful on arrival… they were leafed out pretty good when they arrived the leaves on all but one were brown… just dead looking. One looked pretty good… green leaves but a bit wilted.
I planted all to see if any would make it… and the one did that had the green leaves… it lost most of those leaves… but with some extra care it came back with new leaves and survived that first year… it is a nice tall tifblue… and one of my better producers now… years later.
The others all died… in my excel sheet … I note the vendor I purchased from… and for that one tifblue that lived it says…
Good Luck @jeremybyington — I think many of us have been in your position in the past…
In my case I had some blueberry bushes that I was just sure would not live, and I planted them and hoped… and they did not live… one did make it and I am glad I have it now… but I will never buy from Ty Ty again… I did not know they operated under other names… yikes… got to watch out for that.
They are nice tall straight trees (of some kind)… I don’t know paw paw’s myself… but the lack of total root mass makes me wonder if they will make it. If they are indeed suckers… and I agree they look like that… they were no doubt getting a lot of what they needed from the mother tree.
PS… I wondered what PawPaw tree roots normally look like and did a goog search and found this…
Way different than what you have there.
They kinda look like Exhibit A in that last photo, but with 99% of the secondary roots pruned off.
I soaked them in Dip N Grow and a pinch of fulvic acid for a couple hours and then amended the partial clay soil with wood chips, peat, and bone meal. I’ll see what happens…
Im in a worse pickle on my blackberry canes i ordered from them. They sent the wrong ones the first time… so it will take at least 2-3 years before i even know what they are. They are sending replacements… and i wont know for 2-3 years if they are correct either.
I should have put my money that i sent them in a lottery ticket. better odds.
You do you research and buy the cultivars that you think taste the best and will do well in your climate. Then you wait 2-3 years to see if you made the right choice, then you buy more and wait 2-3 years to see if you made the right choice. so you could look at it as getting 2-3 years ahead on the inevitable.
I’m not sure that soaking in dip n grow for more than ten seconds is recommended… I haven’t seen that strategy mentioned anywhere.
I would however say that you should get those in the ground as soon as possible and get a lot of organics in the mix and mulch around them. Water regularly, fertilize very sparingly (if at all) the first year. Be very gentle with the roots you DO have as they are completely dormant and unable to heal until they wake up for the year, so you don’t want to cause them to rot if they are damaged.
I’ve left almost every tree I have planted in Dip N Grow solution for 15-30 minutes (soaking while digging) and never lost a single tree to that…but this WAS a much longer period of time because my lunch break was over so I will see. Maybe since the root system is also dormant a few rains will dilute it further.
I leave my roots that i question in ProMix with mycorrhizae. I left some in the basement this past winter and i checked yesterday and a gazillion little white baby roots formed. However this was with blackberries. Mycorrhizae is good stuff.
