PZ is right that the nursery business is no picnic! I don't know any nursery personally that's singing the praises of the nursery business. One of the worst things for the smaller nurseries, at least in my opinion, are the big box stores selling plants. Especially ones that sell them at a loss just to get you to come in and buy their other crap. And some places simply have no business selling plants, like grocery stores! From what I understand, places like Home Depot don't actually pay for the plants they receive until they're sold, and the grower is required to bring them in and keep them refreshed, etc. And any returns or refunds come completely out of the grower's pockets, not HD. My partner was in the shipping business, and it was no picnic for them either to ship to these places. I don't know what the answer to all of this is, but I think diversity in nurseries is a good thing, too. But, I don't think the diversity is going to grow, I think it's going to go the other direction. Maybe it's just the business climate today that's so tough on many small businesses of all types, I'm not sure. Personally, I don't call businesses that get giant subsidies, or get no-bid contracts that they don't even fulfill are actual businesses (hear that Halliburton?). And frankly, corporations are not farmers. And much of what they produce isn't really food, nutrition-wise. Boy, have I gone off topic. Better stop here! Jim in NY, I guess I don't get on here that often, but I enjoy your rants, personally. I don't totally agree, but then, I don't have to. As far as DA roses go, he does have some wonderful roses, and many will stand the test of time, I'm sure. I'm not so wild about some of their business practices sometimes (I could say that about a lot of places!). Ah, well.... --Ron

Some (?all) of the typos that Bboy points out look like Optical Character Recognition mistakes during scanning from a paper copy - 'a' to 'n' (in 'Blaauw' to 'Blanuw') is certainly a typical OCR error. Juniperus x media van Melle was at the time (1983) thought to be correct; it was only in 1994 that it was pointed out that it was a later homonym for J. x media Dmitr., published in 1938 in an obscure Soviet journal unavailable in the west. The 'discovery' was made by P. A. Schmidt, who re-named van Melle's plant as Juniperus x pfitzeriana (note, pf-, not ph- !!). Resin

Nice job, Pam! Let's see if I can attempt to answer some of your questions, Jakki... The three producers named are the sources of the vast majority of tc hostas in the US - which means the vast majority of premium hostas. They are all strictly wholesale companies. Shady Oaks sells only young tc plants. The other two also sell tc babies, but also sell plants that they have grown on for a while. When a retailer buys the plants from these wholesalers, they usually also purchase the tags for the plants. Some folks prefer to print up their own, but that doesn't necessarily mean they didn't just buy the plants without tags. So a nursery may very well sell plants that they purchased recently from any or all of these wholesalers, plus they may be selling plants they purchased from these wholesalers and grew on for a year or two, and they may also be selling divisions that they have made from mother plants from whatever source. If they have the wholesalers tag, they probably came from there... if not, you just can't be sure without knowing the nurseryman. All three of these companies are very sensitive to disease and infestations. I've never seen nematodes carried in the products of any of the three. Since both SO and Q&Z deal primarily in young plants grown in greenhouse conditions, they are unlikely to pick up neems. Walters sells some field grown divisions, but they are also quite vigilant. Virus is something else. All three are testing their stock before they tc it so they are getting clean babies. Walters did circulate some HVX stuff because they imported from Holland before we really understood much about HVX. Of course, the problem is, you can trust that they got good stock from any of the three - but you have to trust how it was handled after they received it. I've purchased from all three for about ten years straight and never, to my knowlege, received a diseased plant. Wish I could say the same for some of the smaller growers who I tried to support... Take clean stock and put it into a field with nematodes for a year, or fail to clean your equipment properly after inadvertantly picking up a virused plant, and you've got diseased hostas to sell. I'm not clear how the big box stores get their stock. I was under the impression that much of their stuff was coming directly from Europe - and concerns and standards about HVX are much lower in Holland than in our hosta community here. They consider it OK to ship a whole batch if only a small percentage shows symptomes - ignoring the fact that they are also powerwashing all of them together and reusing water, thus spreading the virus to many other plants. Apparently it is OK with them to sell it if it looks OK now, even if a year or two from now it will have spread HVX to gardens all over the world. No one company provides all the variety a typical hoophouse or big box nursery needs, so they buy from a number of different wholesalers... and it is usually impossible to be sure who the plant comes from unless it bears a particular wholesaler's tag. And about Ken's comment. A little known or understood fact: Every patented or PPAF (Plant Patent Applied For) "must" be sold with an extra tag that gives the patent information. It is illegal to propagate/divide patented hostas. I've heard different versions, but the common understanding of that is you are OK if you divide it for your own garden, but if you sell or trade or even give a division of the plant away before the patent expires, you are breaking the law. If you buy a patented hosta without that tag, either it is an illegaly propagated plant or the seller has just neglected to meet the letter of the law and still has the patent tag in a drawer someplace. When I buy a patented plant wholesale, I receive a quantity of those special tags equal to the number I have paid for. If I were to grow that plant on and divide it, I wouldn't have enough of the special tags to go around and this would, theoretically, prevent me from selling an illegal plant. Royalties are a different matter altogether. Whether or not a plant is patented, an originator may make a contract with someone to produce, grow, and sell the hosta. That contract may include an agreement that the originator will receive a royalty on each sale for a set amount of time. There's been a dramatic increase in the number of plants I pay a royalty on. On a recent wholesale order just over half the plants had a royalty attached - but then, I tend to be buying newer items for my self and resale. On the six hostason that order, I paid .50 on each Brother Stephan, .25 on Remember Me (which goes to the Susan B. Komen foundation). Other royalties ranged from .13 on each Eupatorium 'Little Joe' to .45 for the new Brunnera 'King's Ransom.' As a percentage, the royalty usually adds around 7-15% to the wholesale cost of the plants. How's that for some stuff to chew on?! Gardening can be about hard work and creating and appreciating beauty - but if you combine it with business, it gets mighty complicated mighty fast!

in extremely rural georgia inspection is a joke. I actually try to fail. I had one guy that never got out of his truck... he pulled in the driveway, would flunk me for one thing and say "you need to improve so and so" and would pass me for the inspection. There was one time I was laying some concrete block and had some white dust on my clothes from the morter... when he asked what it was, I told him it was orthene. Didn't phase him. The newer inspector is a plant lover... we pretty much chew some tobacco and talk about plants, the weather and politics (remarkably he's quite an anarchist, despite working for the government). I make him a cup of coffee, show him some of my rarer ferns, and he who'd have thunk... Nothing wrong with my nursery. It's actually kinda sickening... I mean, I'm ethical in my growing, but I wonder what the next grower is getting away with. drew