In Maryland, nursery licensing laws would make it difficult to do so legally for trees and shrubs–things defined as “nursery stock”. I was surprised to learn that the nursery requirements do not apply to non-woody plants, but I confirmed with the extension that this is true. If you want to sell annuals and perennials, you can go for it (as long as you collect and pay the appropriate taxes to the state). I can’t run year - round nursery, but I’m planning to register a little business so I can do wholesale group orders once or twice a year for friends and neighbors, getting stuff that tends to be hard to find and more expensive, like epimediums and hellebores, with a small markup to keep it legal.
Not much you can do in the way of fruit without woody plants though. Just the cane fruits and maypop. And I would just GIVE maypop away, frankly. I’m struggling to keep it from taking over my entire property!
A good liner source for epimediums and helleborus is Creek Hill in Leola, PA. But you need I believe a $300 initial order (as they are a wholesale grower selling in flats of 18, 21, 36, 52, 78.
The logistics of local laws is something I agree many people do not realize. Last year I was trying to find certain peaches to be shipped here in Colorado. I found a few places that while way overpriced would not sell them to me period and the stores who would were out of stock. For some reasons Nature Hills nursery cannot sell peaches to Colorado and neither can Gurney’s while places like Stark Bros, One Green World, Raintree, Trees Of Antiquity, Bay Laurel Nursery etc. can. I noticed the same things with cherries. I ended up getting different varieties of peaches and am kind of glad I was forced to wait. I am sure the mail order nurseries that do ship here are doing something with the trees that the other nurseries are not. Not really a issue if you are willing to only sell in state lines. Issue is when you open a website people will call you asking if you ship to other states.
It seems to me that state laws are often designed to oversee the actions of businesses doing millions of dollars in deals. In NYS, the enforcement is focused on larger companies in the nursery landscaping realm. Smaller operators often function in a slightly different universe. For example, I often see back-pack sprayers in unmarked vans owned by small landscape companies that also own maybe one full-sized landscape truck and run a crew or two at a time. They wouldn’t leave that sprayer in a landscape truck without the proper identification as being a spray business truck. In NY you cannot legally use a hand sprayer without all the proper licensing, including a spray license and a spray business license.
And yet on-site help employed on a property can use the equipment themselves just as the owner can- without an applicators license. It’s pretty hard to tell the difference between on-site workers and vendors in non-commercial vehicles. In the end, enforcement often needs to draw as much money in fines as needed to pay for enforcement. State budgets tend to be tight.
I think one thing that contributes to the decline of retail nurseries is that there are high volume and low volume plants - sort of like bookstores. The high volume plants help to provide the revenues to keep the doors open and provide the volume of shoppers needed to sell the low volume plants. Now like Amazon took most of the mainstream shoppers out of the books stores, I feel the big box stores have pulled a lot mainstream gardeners away from the nurseries and there just isn’t the volume to keep many of them open and the box stores are not really interested in keeping inventory on a plant that they won’t sell volumes of. The same thing has happened to toy stores and pet stores.
Yeah, but as we all know, the “high-volume plants“ are largely crap, hence the frustration.
In the ornamental world, that’s why we end up with entire neighborhoods full of nothing but Bradford pears and silver maples. And even in fruits, it’s often the two or three well-known varieties that don’t actually grow that well for most people.
The online nursery industry may not be doing well but I understand the local nurseries in my area just had several outstanding years. My info comes from the inspector who examines and certifies these nurseries. He also indicated he has done a lot of inspections for folks who were selling plants on a small scale out of their homes but has not done many renewal inspections for the home based sellers this year.
There are lots of things that affect nurseries most of them have already been covered above. However, certification and inspection are a couple of hurdles that affect most of them. I feel worse for those of you who live west of the Rockies. You folks are held captive by what is produced there, most states in that area of the country will not allow for imports from other states. Understandably they are trying to limit the potential for disease and insect infestations, but it is generally pretty ridiculous. We have never shipped a tree west of the Rockies and probably never will. I think we have shipped trees to every other state though!
At my nurseries near me most of the items are pretty garbage to be honest. The varieties are not at my local nurseries. The ones that are that have anything fruit related are sold out nearly instantly for the entire season anymore. I called Echters nursery which is a very expensive nursery here in Colorado so you would think they have fruit trees. I guess they sold out in June last season when our season starts April or May depending on bare root or potted. I would doubt any of our nurseries has plants they sell online like a Warren pear, Green Gage plum, Zestar! apple etc. I would say that is a reason too. All my nurseries have lack of varieties and high prices compared to big box to top it off. Previous years we went to a local nursery called Ol Tools Nursery but we just did all online and big box store purchases last year.
*All the more reason to buy local as much as possible.
Sometimes there is no choice…but if there is, buying from an eastern state is my preference. And the organically grown for rootstock or such? Bull crap.
I’m not about to pay a premium for a tree 3 years from production just because it is ‘organic’.
I think I read that when buying organic you are more so supporting the practice of organic gardening. Any pesticides in plants or seeds will be gone by the time you eat them. We are talking about annuals with that. With a tree of bush where years go by if you garden organic it will not even be there in a trace. Also pesticides are super weakened anymore. You need to cover the bugs in it from head to toe to kill a little bug anymore. With fruit trees I always hear people get into them and ask questions and then you mention you may have to some them. Once you mention spraying them so you have fruits that are not full of bugs or totally diseased they always get turned off. I don’t care if they are organic but if you were to sell it for no extra cost/premium I would buy them. If you told me there was one tree that was organic, they would grow the same, same size, same cultivar and everything else was the same but organic but the non organic one is cheaper I would go with the cheaper one every time.
I think we’re pretty much on the same wavelength.
But, I’d rather my “Charitable Giving” go to something besides supporting organic gardening.
(Church among other priorities.)
Oh, I’m sure some things get through, either being shipped to a friend or relative in another state and picked up at the next visit, or mailed in an innocent looking package.
I mean, just do a look through the forum even, things like currant scions being sent to states that they are illegal in.
And then the ‘sno-birds’ that take potted plants to Florida in the trunk…even though all plants are supposed to be inspected at the state line.
Like everything it seems, loopholes and hoping not to get caught…and in fact, just like speeders, a minute number actually get caught.
I live within 15 minutes of a major international border crossing. I still remember when I could cross over into Canada, shop at a nursery and get a phytosanitary certificate on the spot so that I could take my plants back home (to the US) with me.
This ended around 2005 or so, which is a shame given that 90% of the plants, especially bedding plants, sold around here come with tags stating they were grown in Canada
