youre comparing apples to oranges with the transplants

there are just too many factors which are probably different

I really dont know any plants adapted to shipping.

Ive had plants shipped to me that look like that and within two weeks they pop out of it. If they are stressed for light, getting banged around and going through temp differences - yes they are gonna not be happy.

If someone loads up on fertilizer and water before shipping they will be more brittle and more likely to break.

Hey Mark,

I agree with Mulio that plants do not take well to shipping and that if you go ahead and transplant them, they should recover nicely, especially since the top growth looks pretty good. I think they are just severly stressed, and need a little time and TLC to recover.

Be sure to not overdo the sunlight and wind. Bring them up to it gradually just like you would harden off your own homegrown 'mater babies.

Good luck!

Bets

I don't order plants from commercial sources but have also had plants like that that were sent to me by friends,either by USPS or UPS, 2 day.

I just took off the damaged foliage and babied them a bit and they turned out fine.

The best looking plants I've ever received were only about 4 inches tall and there was wrapping covering the exposed mix surface that helped a lot. I've also received too tall plants that had been tied to bamboo stakes.

Different vendors use different ways of packing their plants from what I've read online as well as feedback from others, so that's eomthing to think about as well, but I suppose one never knows until they buy from a specific vendor what they're going to get and I also know that even a vendor doesn't always know what size plants they might have at different ship times and that's another variable to consider.

Carolyn

Thanks for the opinions!

I guess I've just never mail ordered tomatoes before. I always grow my own or buy locally grown plants if I find a someone selling a variety I don't have. I've done specialty herbs via mail a lot and they come out fine, but they're usually a hardier plant.

The yellowing and curling leaves had me scared, I'd hate to introduce disease into the other 50+ 'mater babies I've got going!

I've potted them up and have them in indirect light today. I'll move them inside under florescents with my younger plants for the weekend and see if they perk up enough to start going outside next week.

They aren't the best that I've seen, but I think they're just stressed from shipping rather than diseased. I'd slowly harden them off and they should recover.

Let me guess? Totally Tomatoes? I ordered pepper plants from them last year. I thought they had their problems straightened out based on reports I read here. Half the plants were snapped in half because they didn't secure the plants at all in the box. The others were the leggiest pepper plants I ever saw! I can grow sturdier plants than that in a closet! I planted them anyway and yes they eventually produce a little. NEVER AGAIN!

I don't think transplanting right after shipping was the best thing to do. That just compounded the shock. I would have let them recover at least a week before transplanting.

From the size of the plants vs. the size of those pots, I would have transplanted.

Another week might have been all that the roots could take.

Poor things! This is what I would do: Trim off all yellow branches. Transplant them very deeply in individual larger pots, like the large black pot on the left in your second picture. Use good potting mix and water well. Then gradually harden them off, before planting them deeply in the ground. They should recover nicely.

I think in another week they would have been dead, or at least unrecoverable.

Several were rootbound, and the rest were on the way. I transplanted them all into 1 gallon nursery pots after trimming off the worst of the yellowed bits. I watered them with a Ferti-lome root stimulator solution I use when transplanting and am going to baby them for a while to see if they recover before trying to put them outside. One of them was as floppy as a string, we'll see what it looks like in the morning.

It wasn't Totally Tomatoes. These were packaged really well, they were just too tall to fit in the box. Looking at them without thinking disease I suspect too much water and not enough light, and maybe a little too warm as well.

Live and learn. I hope the other stuff I bought from them turns out to be worth the trouble.

Like most others said, I think they'll pop out of it. I get some through mail order every year and they always look a little war-torn when I unwrap them. But, they grow up nice and strong. :-)

In the Uk, all mail order tomato plants that arrive in the post are only about three or four inches high and only in there three leaf stage at most, coupled with that the companies ask you for a suitable delivery date that you want the plants by-which you give them with the main order,and they usually arrive dead on cue give or take a couple of days either way, they grow and sow the seed for your order according to date wanted and they are mostly timed perfectly-the plants usually arrive in plug form in specially made clear plastic strong containers with notches in them so that each plug plant can be wedged head to tail in between the double row of notches on either side of the container so they come packed like a tin of sardines, which gives them pretty good protection.

I mail ordered plants for the first time this year as there were varieties I couldn't try any other way. Supposedly reliable grower from Southern CA. So far, I've only recieved 3 out of the 6 plants I've ordered and paid for and those three were bug bombs. Totally covered in aphids. They are still in quarantine, separated from my babies grown from seed and thank heavens I had the presence of mind to put them in quarantine. Never, never again...

Mail ordered plants aren't usually the healthiest since plants aren't really meant to be transferred around. But sometimes you have no choice but to order the transplants online.

What I do is, when the plants arrive I quickly transplant it and then water it with my starter solution, trim the dead leaves and then just monitor it a bit. Most of the time my plants turn out well :)

Here is a link that might be useful: what everybody ought to know about transplants

I support your unhappy feeling.

I had a similiar experience a couple years ago.

This is a good argument for growing your own.

John

I've always grown mine from seed, but I only found the one source for some specialty plants I wanted for a charity dinner we're doing this fall. The site had a hefty minimum order so I just added on a bunch of tomato plants to make up the minimum.

Having seen what I got, I feel well justified in the time and money I spend growing everything from seed.

The one really floppy one is standing up a bit this morning, I moved them inside under florescents for the weekend and will hope for the best.

I've received tomato plants by USPS from various nurseries over the years. A few here and there. Just stuff I can't get anywhere else.

Some came in good condition and some didn't.

I've gotten plants mailed to me by other hobby growers. Some came is good condition and some were frozen (early spring/high altitude flights, I suppose) or otherwise dead on arrival.

I've mailed tomato plants to folks all over the country. They told me some came in good condition and some didn't.

My suggestion is to pack up some tomato plants and mail them to yourself and see what kind of condition they return to you in. See just what innovations you can come up with to meet the challenges of mailing live tomato plants.

Seriously, I don't think anyone should expect tomato plants to arrive via UPS or USPS in the same condition as plants you buy directly off the table at a greenhouse or nursery. I mean when I put my plants back in the shed tonight and for the next two days to protect them from anticipated 3-inch rainstorms that are gonna blow thru here Sat and Sun, they will come back out Monday morning lookin' pale and pitiful and they will not have been packed up in a smothering box and tossed about by Neaderthal package handlers. Get a clue.

I mail ordered transplants this year and my complaint isn't about the wear and tear they underwent from the shipping, I kind of expected that. What I'm unhappy about is that after going through picking out the exact date I wanted the plants for transplant, and being talked into 1 week later by the person taking the order, I then received my plants 1 more week late and a couple of them were so small they just barely had their first set of true leaves! I paid for a transplant not a sprout! And two weeks later than I originally wanted them means I didn't really have the extra time to grow them to real transplant size. Of course, that's what I was forced to do anyway. Fortunately I had grown some varieties from seed, just for the practice, so I was able to plant out a few varieties on time. I'm severly disappointed in the seller, which had come to me so highly recommended!

Susan

Since I grow transplants for sale - though I don't ship - I can relate to the vendor problems and the tough hide required.

It is impossible to please everyone no matter what you do. And you can NEVER satisfy some people. So you smile and nod and move on to the next customer.

At the market or in the greenhouse you can hear all of this within the course of 1/2 an hour - some folks say the plants are too tall, some say they are way too small, they are too bushy or not bushy enough, the stems are too skinny or too thick, too green or not green enough, these plants have too many leaves or these don't have enough leaves, these pots are too big or they are too small, there are no blooms on them, why? I only buy plants with blooms on them., it is too late to plant tomatoes now or it is way too early to plant tomatoes, they are too cheap to be worth anything or they are too expensive, there are 'hairs' on the leaves and knobs on the stems!! What do you mean that is normal?, these leaves don't look right - what? I never heard of potato leaves, etc. etc. etc.

Perfection doesn't exist folks - even when you grow them yourselves. You'd be amazed at how many would find your particular home grown transplants unacceptable too. ;)

But when it comes to tomato plants 99% of them will do just fine and even thrive.

Too large? Too small? Some folks transplant to the garden at the cotyledon stage, some at 4 inches, some at 8", some at 2 foot tall so what is "real transplant size"? Too expensive? Can't speak for anyone else but we clear approx. 50-60 cents on each plant IF we don't include any charge for our time. If we added shipping materials to that we'd lose 50-60 cents on each plant. Shipping costs are beyond the vendors control.

What's the old adage? Walk a mile in the other man's shoes... Try growing 1000's of plants yourselves and see if none of them ever get over-watered or develop a yellow leaf or two. Then deal with all the special orders and the complaints about all your hard work and then as hoosier said above, mail some to yourselves and see how well they turn out.

Better yet, just plant your plants. They will be fine.

Dave

I agree with dave and hoosier the plants been staved for two days with no sunlight or water to make energy so it started to sacrifice leaves to save energy to stay alive it be nice if they could ship them with grow lights and drip irrigation but then they would cost 50 buck a pop i myself have grown wonderful plants from the worst looking seedlings had a pepper get broke by our puppy and with a little tlc grow up to be one of the best peppers I had last year crooked stem and all and I think that it was better because of it

Those plants look like crap. They look like they have been deprived of sunlight for a lot longer than a few days. When I leave my unwanted seedlings in the basement with no water and no light it takes a lot longer than a few days before they look like that. If they were taller than the boxes they arrived in, obviously the vendor does not really care what they are sending you. That being said, we all know how resilient tomato plants are, so put them in the ground and they will do fine...but that does not mean that you should not be annoyed with the vendor.

LOL Dave, I totally agree with you!

It really is so true Dave. I like the way you put it, 'smile and nod and move on to the next customer.' What else can you do...

I was wondering, do people ever try to return plants? You know, buyers remorse, or they went and killed their plants and are looking for somebody to blame? LOL

Dave, you're right that I've never tried growing thousands of plants, although in an average year I do grow hundreds.

The only time I've had plants turn out like that was when I went to Australia for three weeks in April and my neighbor turned off the plant lights, closed the blinds, watered everything every day and never added any fertilizer. I've left them unattended for a week before and not gotten that kind of results.

To me these looked diseased, that was my concern, introducing something into my garden. That was why I posted this.

I still think I was sent the culls for most of the tomatoes, the other plants in the shipment that were actually my main reason for ordering and this site's specialty are all picture perfect.

As long as they perk up and don't look diseased in a few weeks I will plant them, but I wanted to sure I wasn't going to spread something to the rest of my plants.

Thanks everyone for the opinions.

I fully understand your concerns with disease Mark and while we'd all like to believe that no reputable dealer would never sell infected plants it isn't worth the risk.

But those full yellow lower leaves are classic too-much-water-stress. It happens to all of us now and then even under ideal conditions. From what can be seen in the photos the top growth looks fine. Just remove those yellow leaves and plant them deep.

Enjoy your tomatoes.

Dave

I got some mail order plants from heirloomtomatoplants.com 3 years ago, and they arrived looking pretty healthy. So I know it's possible. But I'm sure part of it is just luck, since there are so many things beyond their control.

I ordered tomato plants for the first time this year and 3 out of 4 (yes I have a small vegie garden) were just fine and the 4th was a bit wilted and sad looking. However, after some good care (I also transplanted right away into slightly larger pots until I could plant them outside) they look great. They are all outside now and about 8-10 inches tall and growing well just 2 weeks after arrival.

I don't think anyone should have been so hard on you for asking a simple question.

I ordered from gardenharvestsupply.com and they have very good communication but the shipping was so expensive. Probably never again.

I have to congratulate you, heirloomchefmark, on your homegrown tomato plants they looks fantastic compared to the bought ones. If I could start them out as nicely as you do I'd never order another plant.

Thanks for the compliment sunsi. I've spent a lot of time over the years trying to get it right. My neighbors laugh that they can tell spring is on the way when the racks go up in our windows and the front yard is lit up from the lights.

So, did you trim off the ugly foliage and plant those mail order transplants real deep?

Lookin' better yet?

Planted them all in 1 gallon containers, but a couple really need to be in something twice that deep, I just don't have any on hand. Top leaves are greening up a bit, lower leaves still yellowing. A couple of the plants still have a funky curl/odd color to all the leaves that I'm not too keen on. (I don't believe it's variety oddness, I've grown all manner of heirloom tomatoes and have never seen kind of leaf issue.)

I think it's going to be two weeks before I'll make a call if they end up in the trash or if they look good enough to plant.

looking at the tomato plants you got, i think i ordered from the same vendor and am very unhappy with mine as well.

my cherokee purple came diseased and i had to throw it out.

i ordered and paid for these tomato plants because they had more exotic varieties and before i learned to grow them from seed myself.

i also ordered some from another source and they came looking fantastic while the ones i got from laurel's heirloom tomatoes look terrible.

i am going to send her an email letting her know how unhappy i am with the plants but will not order from her again.

Just a follow up. No it wasn't Laurel's Heirloom Tomatoes.

However, the vendor in question must have agreed with my assessment of the plants in the pictures, because when I got home tonight I found a replacement shipment of the tomatoes I'd said didn't look healthy. The replacement plants look a little stressed as is expected, but are overall very healthy looking and were not abused to get them to fit in the shipping box.

I'm impressed with their response, while it's doubtful I'll order tomatoes again I will use them for other specialty plants in the future.

My, aren't you being coy about the supplier!!!! Since alls well that ends well why so secretive? They would appreciate the word of mouth advertising that they responded to your (in my opinion)petty complaints as mail order live plants are expected to get banged up.

My mom recently bought a topsy-turvey tomato thing from one of the kid's school fundraisers and didn't realize they were sending live tomato plants with it. I stopped by the other day and made her open the package to see what it was like only to find 4 very sad, half dead tomato plants that had been left in the box for a week and a half. I dont think they're going to come back! They look like they probably were the same as the plants in the above pictures when they first arrived (of course after a week in the box, they look horrible now). I told her I'd give her one of my much happier tomato plants for it! I took a picture of them, but my mom was so horrified by what had happened that she told me I wasn't allowed to show it to anyone! It's a funny story but I do feel bad for my Mom!
-t