wow 
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I asked Neil from ToA back in 2016 if he got his jujube from DWN and he said:
Our Jujubes are grown by a personal friend who grows exclusively for us. He does a great job with Jujubes.
I agree- top quality trees, though I would like to see them add more varieties.
Wow @Rosdonald!. That’s a lot of effort you went to in mapping the grafts out. Not only do I not have the artistic talent, but it would take a lot of space for me to map everything out. I’d have more than 400 drawings for almost 2600 grafts. Instead, I have a big spreadsheet and do something like: “3.7’, SSW, 30 degree, tilt S” (3.7’ high, to the SSW of the trunk, tilted South and 30 degrees above horizontal) and have other columns that indicate the cultivar, host tree, type of graft, scion thickness and number of buds, etc. Sometimes in the location/notes I will add how far it is from the trunk as well or some other interesting tidbit.
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I have most of the other information in a spreadsheet. It’s sorted by tree, then grafts on that tree, source, year, pollination group, month it bears, and characteristics. I use that mostly because I can sort by variety, etc to see how many I have of one variety.
The drawing I use in case of a lost tag and during a walkthrough to note what’s doing well and what’s not. That’s not my most detailed drawing at all.
I know it borders on ridiculous. My friend @PomGranny suggested it, and I’ve enjoyed having it a lot. We both like drawing and painting, her professionally, and it’s actually fun! I have about 300 grafts, nothing close to you.
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They were a mighty fine nursery back then. In my case sometime in the 60’s, and mostly melons, beans, oddball stuff I ordered from them.
Just because I’ve made 2600, that doesn’t mean I actually have that many. Some were given away, some hosts died (taking 20+ grafts with it in one case) and a whole bunch of grafts didn’t work, including a lot of budding and grape vines. And even when grafts seem to take, sometimes they just don’t grow and eventually die off (especially persimmons and jujubes for different reasons). I have no idea how many are actively growing, but it is probably on the order of 1/3 or 1/2.
1959 dollars…Each worth about $10.18, so that offer is about $50. Still not bad (I expected it to be even worse when I looked it up). Of course if you look at the median family income, it has gone up from $5400 to $79,900, a 14.8X change, which puts the offer at $74. Not bad, but 38% more than Vaughn charges for five 3/4-1" caliper apples.
Interestingly, Vaughn was founded that same year, though I have no idea what they charged then 
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I might get something from Vaughn nursery, right now I’m thinking of Braeburn, I grew this variety in the Bay Area. For that price it’s worth a try again.
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Even now Stark Bros has some killer deals. Last spring I got 10 purple passion asparagus for 4 or 5 dollars and I got a standard Seckle pear for 19 dollars.
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Tell us more…the email I got from them said free shipping and a 10% discount.
(I’d rather have regular 2019 pricing and no discount and no free shipping! lol)
One thing to consider is when you purchase a fruit tree that it can produce fruit for many years and if you divide the cost over say 20 years production, the cost per year is not a big cost.
That’s true.
Still, a $20 tree can hand you back your investment much quicker than a $59 or $159 tree!
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There are plenty of over-priced trees out there. Some people will pay big prices for larger trees when a smaller tree will take off growing faster than a larger one.
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It was the end of season sale. Most sales on stark Bros are simply save 10% and maybe free shipping. The end of season sale was them trying to get rid of their bare root inventory. I think I saw that they had the 19 dollar Seckle pear early on in the day and even by the end of the day or the next day it was sold out. Like I said end of season sale and bare root. It was likely around May when these sales went on. Free shipping was at 99 dollars at the time so I had to get the seckle pear and something like 200 asparagus crowns.
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That’s a bit of a misleading take. I think it is called price anchoring?
It goes like this. If we are buying a $50 shovel and we find out that the same shovel can be found for $25 at the next store we would take the extra trip to get it there. Often if the purchase is a $2,000 refrigerator and we find out that it can be found for $50 less at the next store, a good number of people won’t bother because it is just a tiny savings over the price of the refrigerator.
Twice the savings, but a completely different perception of gains vs efforts. Thinking about how much the tree will produce seems like a way to inject the same sort of fallacy in the tree buying equation.
I am just offering another way to look at the cost of growing fruit trees, not a fallacy. I planted a grapefruit tree that cost around $20 that would produce hundreds of fruit in a season when it matured. It was still growing at my parent’s house when we sold it, over 20 year old tree.
The factor of cost is defined by both the marketplace and/or the willingness to DIY. How much it could produce is irrelevant and becomes just an excuse to overpay. Heck if you want to torture the numbers in a different direction my grafted apple trees (about $5 each) will produce the same as the expensive big apple tree I bought. One could say that is insane to pay over a hundred for the exact same result.
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For a bare root tree you might want to check local nurseries. There is one near me that has them not much more than Vaughn’s wholesale prices.
Bagged apples running $5.99 for 3 pounds from Michigan…
that is $1 for an 8 ounce apple…
so maybe fruit trees aren’t that expensive
(if they live and you get multiple years of harvests)!
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The nurseries that i like to order from ship in the spring. All of my local places only have trees for sale in the spring.
I guess selling fruit trees in the spring when everyone is tired of winter and excited is best for money making… but not necessarily best for the tree.
It would be nice if all nurseries and local places also sold in the fall for people that are into fall planting.
" My favorite time to plant is fall – when plants and trees are still dormant – to reduce their need for water. This practice works best for me (growing millions of trees)"
- Elmer Kidd, Stark Bro’s Chief Production Officer (retired)