Many nurseries play games so we want to be aware of that. Like any business their goal is to make money. Some nurseries are inspired to grow great plants because its what they do and would do that if it paid nothing. We love ethical nurseries! There are other nurseries who will ship us dead trees and then charge us extra shipping charges each time they ship out more dead sticks.There are those who insist on you saving your shipping label if an item does not work out and others want the dead stick shipped back. There are even those who mislabel intentionally to fill orders! What have been your experiences? Some of us have been taken in by some of them at one time or another! Please share your good experiences and tell us who you recommend and why. In most cases i find myself grafting and propagating my own stuff. This year i ordered 10 juliet cherries from honeyberryusa because of recommendations by others on this site- btw thank you to those who tell us your experiences! I also get trees from local nurseries and have been very satisfied with those! Please share whatever experience you had.
I only occasionally order plants but all have been what they were suppose to be. My problem as only wanting 1-3 plants is the high shipping cost. At least I can see all the cost before ordering. I think this is a great place to list issues because I think the companies might even pay more attention to being on the bad list of experienced growers such as on this forum.
in my experience, any nursery that has unusually low prices is a red flag. if your not familiar with a particular nursery search for reviews on it and don’t rely on just 1 sites opinion. when i 1st started in this hobby, i made the mistake of buying from a few of these places. thankfully i only made small orders to test their stock so the loss was minimal.
Well one great expirence I can attest to is Nourse having great raspberry plants. The ones I order from them a couple years ago had some giant roots and I got raspberries from some of the plants later that summer. Definetly a place I wouldn’t hesitate to order from again.
I’ve ordered a lot from nourse, indiana berry, honeyberry USA and hartmanns. all had good products/prices with fair shipping imho.
My second leaf G41 is in full bloom. Probably 200 blossoms…if they set, then major thinning will be done.
I went to grafting partly because when buying trees they are listed as “simidwarf” or whatever, and you never know which root they’re on.
The MM111 is not the root for an older person, and even M7 I don’t think is appropriate.
You want something that will actually bear before you die!
A seedling rootstock will bear about as fast as M111…and will surely live well beyond the life of the person planting it. That’s why I’ve bought B-9 to G890 to B-118. Won’t know for certain how they do until I try them…but I do know I’m tired to waiting on M111 to bear, even if it is cheap and makes a sturdy tree that will grow in most soils.
@Roth2000 I have ordered Raspberries from St Lawrence Nurseries in Potsdam. The roots were at least a foot and a half long, and just an abundance of hairy life!
I have had many good and bad experiences with buying nursery stock.
One time I ordered tulip bulbs for my own yard and for a science project at my daughter’s Lutheran grade school run by my church. When the bulbs came, my wife and l laid out yellow ones and red ones in a pattern in front of the school building and the 3rd grade kids planted them for their science project. The following spring we had no yellow tulips just two shades of red! The planting was a disaster. The bulbs I purchased for my own yard were not correct either. When I contacted the company they treated me so poorly and insisted on photos before they issued me a credit. I vowed never to buy from them again.
I once ordered a Balaton cherry from stark Nursery. After 4 years it bore nice cherries but they were yellow fleshed! Definitely not Balaton. Stark sent me a replacement the following year but only after they too insisted on a photo of the fruit cut in half. The cherry in question turned out to be Surecrop but not what I had ordered and put 4 years of care into.
Sad to say that I once worked at a very large bare-root nursery that sold a lot of fruit trees. After one of the big wheels retired I heard from the crew that he would have them re-tag varieties of apple trees left in stock to fit what someone ordered if we had run out of the variety they wanted! I put an end to that practice. A few years after that I ran into someone who mentioned he had bought some apple trees from that company and they “must have had a mix up in the field” as two of the 3 varieties he had ordered did not bear true to variety.
Yes accidents happen at nurseries in the rush of harvesting and shipping but some places can be downright deceitful.
We got in “Reliance” peach trees last year at work and sold them all summer. When the fruit started to ripen I called the source of the trees as the fruit was large, round and nothing like the Reliance peaches I have grown in my home orchard. They looked into the problem and finally admitted that their was a “mix up” on that variety and it most likely was redhaven that got shipped to us by “accident”.
I also hate it when a mail order nursery sends me a “substitute” without my permission when they ship my personal order. I now clearly write on each order “no variety, size or rootstock substitutions accepted without my authorization first”. Lets hope what I get is really labeled correctly.
i have a y. transparent i bought from them. its a good sized tree for the money.
It can be crazy frustrating to receive an order that isn’t right, is poor quality, or later turns out to be something else. But I think running a successful nursery must be pretty hard since so many seem to be closing. If the nursery at least tries I’m pretty forgiving about whatever I get.
We have had three mislabeled peach trees from Orange County Nursery. Huge healthy trees just not what we wanted.
Have bought nice trees from Trees of Antiquity, Bay Laurel, Burnt Ridge, Grandpa’s Orchard and Burchel. Henry Fields, and Stark brothers too.
The only place I have had real issues with was Southmeadow Fruit Gardens.
Years ago I ordered two branched trees for the spring season, and they were short of stock, so I said I’d take the trees the next year. The next year they did not send them and refused when I called because they said it was too late and warm here in Arizona. Finally after being more pro active and emailing/calling I did get 2 trees the next year…but they were NOT the branched trees I originally paid for, they were about 1/4"-3/8" caliper high grafted benchgrafts! They both grew poorly the first season planted in the nursery, so when they went dormant I cut a little side branching scion that first fall and grafted onto something more vigorous. …good thing because one died in the nursery the second year.
If I had botched an order that badly, and only had benchgrafts after all that time, I’d have sent them with an opology letter and refunded some or all of the money.
I now have one runt of a Celestia tree (the one variety I could not find another source for) that cost me three years of hassle and $74.00
I can understand human error, but that is bad business. If anyone wants Celestia, or Lyman’s Large Summer I am now growing them and willing to work with folks for scion…something Southmeadow wouldnt do for me.
Edited to add that it may still be a while before I know if the tree (and scion) is true to variety. And the rootstock was not on the label.
Also Lyman’s Large Summer came from Maple Valley Orchard’s tree via a scion trade… not from Southmeadow.
Too many businesses regard the customer as the problem instead of the point of being in business! They take a defensive, adversarial attitude towards customer complaints, and even towards the customer in general.
I do know from personal experience that mistakes are gonna happen, and customers are sometimes going to be disappointed. We always made it a policy to thank the customer for bringing problems to us, would refund/replace in a heartbeat, and would usually do a follow up. I always told them I appreciated that they gave us a chance to fix the problem instead of just firing us (going somewhere else). In business your reputation is everything. Plus, it’s a lot easier to keep a good customer than to find a new one! Awful hard to find replacements once you’re got a bad rep.
All very true @marknmt.
My hubby has been managing a tree service for over 20 years. It is far cheaper and requires less stress and effort to make every customer happy then to try to advertise enough to compensate for doing bad work.
There have been very few like maybe three customers in all the years that were “unwilling to be made happy” and we don’t bill a customer that is unhappy with the job.
This policy has resulted in a constantly expanding customer base of people that heard about us from happy customers, and who then tell their friends about the great job we did for them. Hubby also spends less time bidding jobs he doesn’t get, and way less money advertising.
I never have to deal with upset people on the phone either. Respecting and valuing good customers goes a long way.
Amen! You’re smart business people- more power to you.
I always figure that rather than pay somebody good money to mess something up I can save money by messing it up my ownself. But I think my big lesson on the virtues of hiring the right person came when we decided we needed new drains in the house. The existing cast iron was poorly designed and had been mangled by previous owners who destroyed the vent part of the system in reroofing. I made drawings and took measurements and priced parts, had it all figured out and everything, but finally had a pro in. When he got done I could see how simple, functional, and perfectly he’d done it, and how wrong I was going to do it. I can’t remember all the times I’ve outsmarted myself and I guess it’s just as well!
I tell folks I have hundreds of satisfied customers, and a couple that can’t be made happy.
And, in business, that’s good odds.
I thought maybe I would add in my frustrated moment. This is my first year grafting. I wanted to buy some different apple varieties to put on my ginger gold tree and I went with Queener Farms. I don’t know if I’m even allowed to mention them on this forum but I would probably not go with them. I put in an order and got charged for the order. Never received the wood and I have tried to contact them via email and left voice messages about three or four times. I was kind and not rude but still have not heard back from them. Yes it was cheap. Only $17 but it’s the idea behind it. Just frustrating because I know that timing makes a difference with grafting. I had to call Bob Purvis Nursery and ask if he could possibly send me a late order. He was very nice and kind. On top of it with no problems. I’m going to send him a check tomorrow so I hope things go better the second time. +1 for bob purvis!
That’s too bad Chris, I’ve had good experiences with them the 2 times I’ve dealt with them in the past. Try contacting Jeannie: JeannieBerg@gmail.com
I did. Several times. It’s cool. Hopefully I will just have my order filled by Purvis Nursery. I’m sure they are good Nursery but maybe I just had bad luck. As I mentioned it was only 17 bucks. Not a big deal. Just got frustrated. Sometimes I feel like it’s just luck of the draw. I have dealt mostly with stark brothers nursery and have really enjoyed purchasing stuff through them. But I’ve also talk to my neighbor who used them a year ago and got frustrated. Mostly with product. Luck of the draw.