We in the south get it,Ken! It doesn't affect me since I never order online,from anyone. Sorry about your rock hard ground,but I live here,and we don't have it! Lol! Phil

Hold on to things much there Ken? lol

You very well know that a noob will walk in and it will happen. It's a comin'. lol

You left out the best part where you tell them to just throw it on their driveway and it will be fine! ;)

yeah frank..

but then i can link them to this post ...

see.. its a devious plan ... lol ...

ken

Thanks Ken to mention that, I remember those complaints from last year, when there was cold weather in Wisconsin, plus an illness in direct family, so he could not ship exactly as Southern customers expected. I just ordered several hostas from LOTG and look forward to get those divisions from field grown mature plants with large roots, in the middle to the end of May. All of those I bought there have grown very well.
Bernd

Ken, I was a complainer last year and I was justified. I understand that the ground is frozen. I understand that you'all had a late spring as well. However, when a northern grower ships to Ohio before Texas, I have a reason to gripe. Other folks were saying that they had received their shipments and mine didn't come until 2 or 3 weeks later. If I don't receive my plants until June 1, I've lost almost a growing season, as it gets hot here by July 1.

I did not name the grower I was complaining about and won't, as I would do nothing to harm his business. He told me in the past that he shipped to warmer areas first. He was wrong on this occasion and you are wrong to criticize those of us in the warmer areas.

We are not being unreasonable. This is not the first time you've said this and every time you imply that the folks from the south are wrong to expect reasonable shipping dates. I don't think so.

bkay

awww ... bkbroiler.. i had no recollection of who ... dont feel insulted or guilty

i just want peeps to understand what goes on outside their own little world...

like me not even able to contemplate hosta in z8 TX.. whats that all about

ken

Ken, You're not the only one. There are just some zones I won't move to because of my hostas.

You could just avoid reading those posts, then you wouldn't have to get annoyed???

When I lived in Arkansas I lived 5 miles south of the Mason-Dixon line. I had a couple of very good friends who always addressed me as "Yank". They both lived 1/2 mile south of the M-D line. How do you figure!

This is kind of my parental way of saying "be nice; don't fight"!

Gosh - I love this forum.

Les

Bkay,
If you have been here a full year, then you should know not to take Ken's posts personally. Its just that his style tends to be....ahhhh....direct.

You have to have someone adding life to the Forum.

The problem is just not passing by and not reading the post: it is the problem on Gardenweb that the bad post will never go away.
If you say something bad about a company its here to stay even if the nursery folks had fixed the complainers problem.....

Let's say someone does a search on Gardenweb of the nursery that has been bashed, the post will come up. Hopefully the reader would read more than one post and realized that the problem may have been fixed.

Listen to Ken on this one!

In spring some northern hosta growers sell and ship plants out of refrigeration, so it seems, they can ship in April. Some other growers dig them out of the soil when the frost is gone and plants are growing. That means, a customer in the south should inquire when and how shipment is done. My 2 cents.
In my town of zone 5 one nursery buys TCs in January/February, grows them in greenhouses and sells them in June to Fall nicely flushed out.
Bernd

hey bern ...

walters gardens [zeeland MI] .. one of the largest wholesalers in the US if not the world.. sells their TC from the coolers ... they probably have a couple ten thousand or hundreds of thousands chilled at any given time ... been there.. seen that.. said WOW!!!! ... lol ...

but a lot of the hosta mail order places are just backyard .. or small time businesses ... and trust me... they dont have drive in chilled warehouses ...

and that is the root of my concern.. if all the little guys.. who specialize in something like hosta.. cant keep up with big industry.. then all we will be left with is the few dozen a year the big guys make ... and all the older ones.. will be left to their fates ...

i know for a fact .. that all hallson has in his fridge is tomorrows dinner.. lol ... [wel i never looked in his fridge.. but i presume such... lol]

bkay doesnt allow direct email.. so i cant do this privately ...

i did not have anyone in mind when i posted this .. and if it upset you .. i apologize ...

ken

Ken, I don't understand your point of view. You are neither a hosta grower, a southern client or a small business owner. Yet, you decide that you don't want to hear gripes from the southern clients of northern growers.

I'm a southern client and a small business owner. As I remember the post, the other poster was griping because the grower wasn't responding to her emails. Her plants had not arrived and other people's had. That's a red flag right there. As a small business owner, you have to respond to complaints, immediately if not sooner. You have to say something, if only to say, my wife is in surgery, I can't handle this right now.

In both cases, the grower was in err. I know that you had a late spring. We accept that. What is not acceptable is not responding. That was the other growers problem.

In my case, the previous year, the grower said they shipped to the warmer areas first, and did. This policy changed last spring, as shipments to northern areas were complete when mine had not shipped. My plants arrived about June 1.

This has nothing to do with frozen ground. This is a vendor not returning emails. This is a vendor who chose to ship to northern areas first. This has nothing to do with geography or weather. This are bad businesss choices.

I don't want an apology. I want you to understand that you are giving both businesses a pass. They don't deserve it. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. Small business thrives on groups like this. It's very difficult to reach an appropriate audience. Those who are mentioned here get some nice referrals. On the flip side, if they screw up, they deserve to be called on it. That's all we did.

bkay

bkay,
I think you visualize these nurseries as modern businesses with with all kinds of resources, equipment and technology at their fingertips. You need to realize that these are true mom and pop operations which barely cover costs.

They probably don't have a shipping system which will give any relevance to customer location or the date of an order.
The owner doesn't have a secretary, so sometimes messages get lost and aren't returned.

Try to think of these folks as hosta lovers, like us, who decided to turn their hobby into a little business. I give them more than a pass because we need them to survive.

Thanks Harry, you explained it very well. Bkay, what would happen to your business when you suddenly would get seriously sick? That happened last year.
Bernd

All I'm going to say about that is, I just got moved lower on the Hosta survival list by that new USDA zone chart. Can you believe 9A and not even 8B anymore?

Just consider, Ken et al, that those of us this far south who love hosta have an envy for the ease with which you can grow these beauties. Well, maybe not totally EASY, but at least your climate is not dead set against having them here.

I ordered from Nancy and Bob Solberg Green Hill Farm, in January to catch their special before Jan 31st. I got a card from Nancy that my order will be shipped April 9. Of course, they are not in super cold climes, and I'm happy with that date. No running back north to garden this year for me. I'll not have to worry about shipments arriving AFTER I head north, like last year. A friend accepted the order, and keep the hosta alive all the hot summer long, in small pots, because I had a strange split domicile setup. It got hot, we had a drought, and that happens in many gardening zones, not just the deep south. All we can do, down here, is hope to keep these babies wet enough in the heat, and cool enough in our winters, to prosper. One of those hosta still hanging in a pot is the blessed Stained Glass, which is still growing.

Ken, I always did like grumpy old men. :)

What happens in my business is that I work anyway, sick or not.

In the case of the sick guy, he wasn't too sick to make shipments, (as they were still going out) just too sick to answer emails.

In all fairness, I would still buy from either vendor. In fact, I've bought from my vendor again since then.

bkay