Re: Mail Order Nurseries

I have talked to a guy that has grown for Wal-mart... he told me that the
worst thing is they dictate to you how much soil you can use what size of
pot you can use... everything... they want the cheapest plant they can
get... such as in pansies... they have no root ball.
Again .... you get what you pay for!
Patricia




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marge Talt" <mtalt@hort.net>
To: <gardenchat@hort.net>
Sent: Monday, December 01, 2003 10:11 PM
Subject: Re: [CHAT] Mail Order Nurseries


> From the little I know, you're right on, Donna.  When you talk about
> wholesale growers, they are actually farmers; the green industry
> often refers to the plants as "crops".  They grow in quantity to make
> up for the really small individual plant price when sold wholesale -
> the only way they could survive.  When you grow in vast quantity, you
> grow the tried and true and don't experiment with off the wall,
> difficult or rare plants.  Volume makes a huge difference - which is
> why Wal-Mart, Lowes and Home Despot sell plants cheaper than regular
> garden centers or specialist nurseries - they get deals for immense
> volume - numbers that boggle my mind, like tens of thousands of any
> one plant.  Of course, they don't know squat about the plants; don't
> take care of them and sell a lot of mislabeled stuff, but, it's
> cheap.
>
> Now, when a smaller nursery buys wholesale plants, they are often
> plugs that are grown on for, as Gene said, 6 months to a couple
> years.  To the cost of the plugs, the nursery has to add something
> for the labor involved in growing them; the cost of potting soil,
> pots, water, etc. and the cost of pulling, inspecting, sorting,
> boxing, and paper work, not to mention other overhead items like
> catalogs, which cost a bundle to produce and mail.  When you examine
> an individual plant's price, you gotta wonder sometimes how smaller
> nurseries make it.  Part of how they make it is that all the work is
> done by one or two people working really long hours and not making
> squat for their labor.
>
> With the big wholesalers, all the costs of production are actually
> covered by their plant price - which is substantially lower than
> retail - and volume makes it possible.....just like corn, soybeans or
> wheat.
>
> Marge Talt, zone 7 Maryland
> mtalt@hort.net
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>
> ----------
> > From: Donna  <justme@prairieinet.net>
> > Ya know after reading many comments.....
> >
> > Wondering if the actual growers are like farmers.... they get min
> dollar
> > amounts, then this one adds a cost, then that one....
> >
> > Hum... no wonder so little new and exciting stuff comes out, they
> can't
> > afford to take a risk.
> >
> > IMHO, but could be really wrong here....
> > Donna
>
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