Re: trial plants?

**J* E* M* S* <t*@gmail.com>**

If the plants are perennials or shrubs, I don’t write about them until they do their thing, and that’s what I tell the growers/marketers who send me the trial plants.

Depending on their size, I either pot them up in quart or gallon pots, or, like Lois, plant them right in the ground. I transplant the pot-grown ones to the ground in late summer or early fall if they are bulked up. Those that aren’t get heeled in, in their pots and mulched with chopped leaves for the winter. The worst are the growers who send us plugs late in the season (August/September…I’ve even received plugs in October!). These just cannot grow enough to make it through my winter, no matter what I do to them. Fortunately, this rarely happens any more.

jems

On Jun 16, 2014, at 2:02 PM, Lois deVries <loisdan6@gmail.com> wrote:

Nan,

I usually put them right in the ground, where I think I would want them
permanently, with appropriate spacing for their full size. Many bloom the
following spring/summer, but some of the landscape roses have bloomed right
away. Interestingly, the hydrangeas PW sent out last year are all in bud,
where my old-timers are having to send up new shoots. Maybe because the
youngsters were buried under leaf litter during our horrible winter? Others,
like Deutzia and Pearlbush took several years to bloom -- but then the
Undergardener had neatly chopped off their heads with the weed-whacker.

Did I tell you about the time he pulled out my prize hibiscus because they
"looked like dead sticks?" But that's a story for over drinks at Pittsburgh
:-) .

Lois
Lois J. de Vries
973-383-0497
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-----Original Message-----
From: gardenwriters [g*@lists.ibiblio.org] On
Behalf Of N Sterman
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2014 12:17 PM
To: Garden Writers -- GWL -- The Garden Writers Forum
Subject: Re: [GWL] trial plants?

So this brings up an issue for me that I wonder if others face.  Trial
plants are usually too tiny to plant in my garden so I have to pot them up
and grow them for a year before planting them out.  That defeats the purpose
since I can't report on how they did until at least year AFTER I've received
them.  

I've suggested to the folks who send out samples that they send larger
plants and several of each since testing one really doesn't tell you much.  

Am I the only person who struggles with this? 

Nan

_____________________
Jo Ellen Meyers Sharp
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