I’ve ordered from just about everyone and I’m done with online ordering. The last two years I’ve just bought 6-7 foot potted trees from Lowes for $30, then grafted them to the variety I wanted. About the same price as on line, but it’s a 6-7 foot potted tree that shortcuts a couple years of growth.
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Gurney’s Nursery trees have been okay for me. Their other products- shrubs, plants, etc., have been very poor. I just bought one apple tree and it looked fine. I bought a few packs of seeds and ordered some tomato plants. I paid $7.99 and $8.99 for each of them. They came packed like they were some sort of plastic part instead of a plant. The roots were only about 1" around and 1" in length. The label on the plant was longer than the roots. They were the smallest roots I have ever seen on a tomato plant that was actually for sale. Definitely not worth $8 and $9 each worth. They are worth maybe, maybe $1. I will not be buying any more tomato plants from Gurney’s.
I asked about buying from Gurney’s years ago on Reddit. At the time I was planning to buy asparagus crowns because I think they have the jump crowns which allows you to skip a year of waiting. The people who answered said they were expensive for what they were selling. Years later I bought asparagus crowns for 3.99 for 10 crowns a piece from Stark Bros when they went on sale and just bought enough for free shipping. I have made use of that many crowns anyway. In terms of roots you would be surprised what nursery try to get away with. I bought a jumbo size chestnut from Burnt Ridge this year and paid a pretty penny for it. It was massive but had a little strong of a root for a root system. So while big it will need to develop a root system and I paid some $$$ for it. Funnily I think my other chestnut I got with a 1 foot size had more of a root system. I see green on both so hopefully they come out and grow.
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I really appreciate that this thread has received so much feedback. It seems pretty clear that many of the big stores don’t seem to offer a high quality plant for the premium price they charge. I know it’s easy to knock the bad orders, but does anyone have great experiences to share about smaller nurseries which SHOULD be considered?
@Buzzferver at Perfect Circle Farm sent me some great hard to find persimmon scion and appears to have some trees in stock.
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https://www.etsy.com/shop/GreenAnoleFarms
Has a sweet selection, very healthy plants, and a lot of hard to find stuff
https://www.etsy.com/shop/TropicalFruitGarden
Super healthy plants, shipped quick and packed well
Whitman Farms sent me a great Morus Nigra, and Lucile was a pleasure to speak with. JFE always sent me great plants. OGW has always sent me good healthy plants. Madison Citrus over-delivers on size and vigor. McKenzie farms is great, great people and great selection. Edible landscaping as someone mentioned their site is a mess, but the plants they’ve sent me have been great. Rain tree has always sent me good plants but I hesitate to shop from them only due to their very impossible to know ship schedule. It always takes a very very long time to get anything from them, it’s been as much as 8 months. With that said the plants have been worth the wait. I really have almost no bad nursery experience. Some places have sent smaller than I wanted plants(for the price), but they grew and are now thriving and/or producing. I fully feel that if a plant arrives and isn’t DOA (hasn’t happened yet) that it is 100% my responsibility if it dies or doesn’t grow well. I am a bit discouraged at the amount of people seeking refunds for plants that very well could have been their fault that they didn’t thrive. I imagine nurseries aren’t operating on large margins, and these instances definitely drive up prices. Maybe I’m wrong about that, I’m open to it, however that’s my philosophy with plant shopping online.
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Trees of Antiquity. I’ve never received a bad product or plant that wasn’t perfectly packed. Never had anything I bought from them fail.
Jung Seed. You wouldn’t guess it from their website but everything I’ve ever gotten from them is perfect caliper, quality and packed well. I suspect they get their stuff from a bigger nursery, but whoever it is they have nice trees.
Wafler Nursery is top quality as well especially if you’re more on the commercial side. More consistent than Cummins in my experience.
Century Farm Orchard and St Lawrence nursery are great and easy to communicate with. A lot of varieties that can’t be had anywhere else.
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just got another tree from fedco. nice sized tree with good roots. again, horrible packaging ! they put it in this big plastic bag with wet shredded newspaper but theres nothing to keep the newspaper in the root zone and the bag for that matter. a quick wrap of tape around the bag above the root ball would fix this issue. i messaged them about it last year. no response. i guess they think they know better. luckily they’re in state so i got it quickly. if it had to cross the country the tree likely wont make it.
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The grafted persimmon nurseries are usually either way too expensive or always out of stock…
Chestnut Hill if they are true to name have excellent trees and a great selection. Someone mentioned that they dont trust them…, but that makes little sense as their target audience is hunters.
Final rant- i hope that someday a nursery will carry all of DWN trees… instead of me having to order from 5 different nurseries to get their offerings.
Also would be nice if a nursery carried the full catalog of Freedom tree farms…
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Hoping to change that personally in the coming years. You should see the roots on the trees I have to graft.
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I will say that I prefer, and have had better luck, with nurseries that group orders together. If I decide I need something after my initial order, and it seems I always do, some nurseries will group those orders together with the original order and ship all at the same time. ToA, Wafler, and Cummins all seem to do that. Fedco and Raintree seem to keep them in the order they were received and ship at different times.
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Most of them are on e-bay and I’ve ordered from lots of them with positive outcomes. Just read the reviews to weed out the bad ones.
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In my experience:
Stark bros gives smaller trees, but I like their customer service and 1 yr guarantee. I ordered a ijkk persimmon from them and literally the first two they sent has the scion for within a week of getting it. They always shipped me a new one, no questions asked. I used the rootstock of the ones that had a scion die and now have 3 different persimmon trees.
Jung seeds, got honey berries from them, good quality but they were small. Overall no issues
Rareseeds has some very unique varieties especially the strawberries. They are pricey but all plants I have gotten from them have survived and thrived to the point of spreading more than when I buy 25 barefoot strawberries
Raintree nursery gives me the best quality trees from what I’ve ordered that produce fruit faster than the ones I have gotten from stark. Their guarantee is not nearly as good though, so there is less peace of mind there.
Gurneys is expensive and I have ordered some trees from them. Very small, would not order from them again unless I have a big coupon.
Fruitwood nursery is good for scions, but if they miss a scion in your order, they say they will refund you, but they never did. I wasn’t going to make a big stink about it, but that was a bit annoying.
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Check out Rock Bridge Trees in the fall. They are one of the rare nurseries carrying JT-02 and both my JT-02 appear to be waking up this spring which is the first spring I could get a persimmon to wake up. If you buy more than 1 tree the cost goes down.
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The nurseries I have had the best luck with is Trees Of Antiquity, Cummins and Rock Bridge. The only tree I have had die from Trees If Antiquity died of disease. Cummins I have not had a tree die yet from them. Rock Bridge Nursery I have only had 1 death but everything in that one pot appears to have died over winter. It is possible it was just too much shade or it was possible the pine tree shielded the snow from the pot over winter and the roots dried out and died. Who knows but it was something with that one pot specifically.
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i got mine from a member on here Hillbillyhort… i try to support members or locals the best that i can…which is why i drove to see Cliff for alot of my collection. I dont mind paying extra or going out of my way… what they do is amazing and im thankful.
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Cliff shut his doors to trees otherwise I would have gone to him. Trust me I tried.
He sells but does not ship trees, to my knowledge. I bet he just enjoys going to the farmers market, I know I do!
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It’s my understanding that Rock Bridge is one of the newer ‘good ones’, being mentored by a former forum mentor. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy from them, and tried to this past year but they were sold out of the variety I was looking for.
Cardinal was the first tree I’d gotten from One Green World that was a dud. I’m guessing maybe it isn’t from Northwoods or something.
I know they have been around for a few years at least. He seems to open sales in the late summer or fall and ship in the fall. I put in my orders around September and got it shipped out late October both times. My only gripes with them is their limited selection of different stuff and that they ship far into the end of my season. My persimmon trees came 2 days before our first snow last year. They survived but I did have to dig them in a few extra times as they roots did not attach themselves into the soil yet. Like I said they did survive and he is one of the few to sell JT-02 online which tell me what he does sell and what he has does good. The only thing I have bought from him that died the entire pot died so it was not him but more of an issue with that pot.
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