If anyone is interested- this thread is to share information on where to obtain things that you have bought or want to buy that are mostly outside the norm… as well as things that you might have never even thought of growing. Also feel free to ask where to find something that you are looking for as maybe someone can chime in as to where they obtained theirs.
Karneol Tart Cherry- Schlabach’s. ( i have not bought this yet)
French Catholic Euro Plum- Schlabach’s (have not obtained).
This is a good spot to promote where I work. I work at happygroves.com a mostly tropical fruit nursery. We do not ship, but if you are in the Tampa area or visiting, we have over 100 varieties of Mangoes, 25+ avocadoes and 20+ types of citrus (in addition to other tropicals and a few temperates that are rare in the area). They are not necessarily the rarest varieties, but we try to consolidate and keep in stock as many as possible. Feel free to check us out.
Outside of self-promote, tradewindsfruit.com and bellamytrees.com are great places to by tropical fruit seeds. Tradewinds also has some unique vegetable and herb seeds and some rare temperate tree seeds. Bellamy’s has some seedlings for sale as well. Both of them have new stuff in stock usually once or twice a month and have relatively easy to navigate websites (at least on the phone).
Reallygoodplants.com is a great place to get scionwood for a wide variety of figs, mulberries and some other cool stuff (plums, peaches, apples, hybrids, loquats, carob, basically anything not citrus) ran by @Marta. They have two big sales a year, with there winter scionwood sale going on right now. I had 100% take on my figs last year and looking good on my stuff from this year so far.
Tropicalfruitforum.com has alot of good sellers dealing with seeds, trees, cuttings and scionwood, leaning more towards tropicals and subtropicals. They also have international sellers.
I have bought stuff from all these places and have had success. Not necessarily specific rare things, but they all can carry plants that you can’t get anywhere else. I reccommend checking them all out at least once to see if they have anything you are interested in. I know most of this forum is less tropical than me, so if you aren’t interested in browsing things you can’t grow, I still reccomend Tradewinds and Really Good Plants for a good temperate selections.
Zill is legit. We get alot of our products from them wholesale. Zill’s is where alot of high-end mangoes were bred (I wanna say Lemon Zest as an example but I am unsure). Not sure if they ship small quantity orders, there website sure looks like wholesale only. But they are definitely real, relatively famous in South Florida.
Zills have been improving and offering better selections for many years.
When they dropped their annona cross breeding program in the 80’s? it was a big disappointment.
It looks like the site just went live in April. It looks like they hired a social media/web manager…their Facebook page changed markedly. Kind of strange vibe for a wholesaler. I’ve heard about them forever, but no need for 50 trees at once (yet).
Separately, I’ve had good experiences with Bellamy.
Madison Citrus Nursery has a lot of rarer citrus and I’ve been very pleased with orders.
I agree that Tradewinds has a great selection. I like buying cacao seeds from them because they have several different varieties (and I’m hopeful that one seedling will be semi cold-hardy someday. I have one that’s survived and grown in my relatively cool house for a year!)
Stark Brothers just started carrying Lubera apples, such as Paradise Sparkling.
I think i am on the waiting list for all of those…
Just saying i would pay 4X the price of cuttings for what they show as successes in rooting.
Would be a good side business for someone to sell rooted cuttings to the public… i dont need grafts of these myself… since they root from cuttings.
My success rate is about 25 percent and 0 percent on some of them.
I did have over 50 percent or more take in a dark room a few winters ago but they broke dormancy too early and it was a waste of time since i dont have a greenhouse.
Still just saying that i would rather have rooted cuttings and would easily pay $15-$20 per. Maybe someone will take it to that level some day.
I tried to obtain Clark’s mulberry… sent money but never received anything. So maybe someone will offer those at some point.
it really reads as a scam. plus presumably they have photos if theybe been doing it for years