You've found the famous Dave's Garden website! Join this friendly global community that shares tips and ideas for home and gardens, along with seeds and plants!
Check out the DG homepage for a brief overview of what you'll find in this gardening mega-site.
Login
If you don't have an account yet, visit the registration page to sign up.
Posted on May 23, 2012, updated June 8, 2012
Posted on May 22, 2012, updated May 23, 2012
Some lingonberries were supposed to be shipped in late April. It's now the second half of May. I only found out about the delays by contacting them, they didn't initiate telling me. I canceled the order.
On May 23rd, 2012, trudyh added the following:
I should have said that I had contacted them and gotten a revised shipping date of June, and then I canceled the order.On June 8th, 2012, trudyh changed the rating from neutral to negative and added the following:
Updated June 2012: More than two weeks after I canceled the order, the plants showed up on my doorstep. Now I have to go to the trouble of returning them. I changed my rating from Neutral to Negative.
This company is near the top of my list of companies to never, never order from again. I ordered two bush cherries, Joy and Jan, In February and was advised on March 7 that they would ship in a month. They arrived almost a month late, well into May (the credit was not charged until April 29) badly grown, badly packed, and badly treated before shipping.
Badly grown? The "one year plants in 4" containers" were incredibly skinny (stems about as wide as the bristles on a scrub brush), barely rooted cuttings which could well have been taken when the order was received. They were in 2 1/2 inch, not 4", pots, and the shallow "azalea" pots at that.
Badly packed? Both arrived broken. They had been carelessly tossed into a box (in plastic bags or wrapped in plastic sheeting if I remember) and some crumpled newspaper tossed in after them. One cutting had been taken branched, and one branch was broken off and had stripped down the stem leaving a large gap in the cambium. The other was broken but not quite detached about halfway down its tiny stem. Both had broken dormancy by this time, of course, but read on.
Badly cared for? One plant was completely soggy, with standing water in the bag, and had been so for long enough that almost all the roots had rotted. It was leafless in that any leaves had melted off and were lying about or stuck to the plastic. The other's potting material was completely dry, not a trace of moisture, and the plant was all but completely dried out -- to the point where the stem was starting to wrinkle and the leaves, of course, long dried out.
The total charge was about $35.00 -- I think the plants were about $13 apiece. Pretty steep, considering, but for some reason these charming little fruiting bushes (the fruit doesn't much resemble anything one normally thinks of as a cherry) have fallen out of favor. I took the chance because I'd had a fine plant from Raintree two years before and wanted more.
Did they live? Yes, no thanks to the nursery. I cut both to one or two buds, repotted them after trimming the worst of the rotted roots from the waterlogged plant, and grew them on in pots for two years before planting out into the ground. The dried out one recovered much more quickly and had leafed out again in a few weeks. The waterlogged one had to more or less start again as a cutting and took a couple months to start looking as if it might live.
