The mail-order garden, or not

If you’ve ever shown any remote interest in gardening, you’re probably familiar with the springtime glut of mail-order gardening catalogs and email ads. I did the mail-order thing a decade ago when we put in a totally new yard (at a new house) and I found myself this year doing the same thing once more, since we moved into this house about 18 months ago and didn’t even have grass . . . but over the years, I’ve put together a few tidbits of advice that I find myself passing along (mainly to my husband who kills more plants over a two-year period than I plant) so I figured I might as well post it here. I’ll try to organize them but since I’m not all that well organized myself, I dunno how this is gonna turn out, so bear with me.

About Dirt
Yeah, dirt. No matter how healthy your plant is when you stick it in the ground, if your dirt sucks, your plant will die. It’s worth the effort to either ask long-time residents about the soil in your area (what grows, what doesn’t - this will usually tell you what the soil lacks as far as nutrients), or send off a sample to your county agricultural extension office or even a local community or junior college - sometimes you can have a professional soil analysis done for free. Don’t assume that your dirt is already suitable for the kinds of plants you want. Do a little “digging” to find out if you need to add supplements, then give them ample time to take effect before you break the bank on a full-scale landscape that’s gonna turn yellow in 5 months. Been there, done that, wasn’t funny.

Along the same lines, if you’re going to add soil supplements and/or fertilizer, be sure to do so based on the actual requirements of the plants you intend to occupy that bit of ground. For example, roses require different soil conditions than azaleas. And it’s been my experience (after watching several hundred dollars worth of fruit trees burn up over the last 15 years or so) that when the old guy down the road says to use sheep manure on your apple trees, he doesn’t mean dump it in the hole when you plant the tree . . .

About Nurseries
Local nurseries are also a great place to find out about the soil conditions (or to find out how to get your soil analyzed). Local nurserymen can also debunk “miracle” gardening claims - sure the mail order house will sell me 9 varieties of grapes that will grow in Zone 8 or 9, but in reality, only ONE variety is disease resistent enough to survive more than a year in our disgustingly humid and pest-prone climate. Sometimes the plants at the local nursery are more expensive than the mail-order plants, but they’re also usually LIVE when I get them. Mail-order plants are shipped dormant, we’re talking “nearly at death’s door” dormant in some cases, and without immediate special care, they may not revive. You don’t have to worry about that when you cart home a dozen 1-gallon boxwoods from the local “Pik-a-Plant.” You’ve seen and chosen every plant yourself so if you got a half dead plant, it’s your own fault. The drawback to shopping local nurseries is that they all have the exact same things every single year - they’re businessmen - they have to carry what is guaranteed to grow so you don’t find too many exotic or experimental plants, or even heirloom plants for that matter.

Don’t be afraid to ask your local nursery if they can or will order specific plants for you, if you can’t find what you need. Chances are they can get what you see in any mail order catalog directly from the source.

About Mail Order
The first thing to remember when you DO choose to order plants through the mail is to order early. If you wait till May to order fruit trees, it’s likely they won’t show up till the end of June when it’s really too hot to be planting anything, at least in my neck of the woods. Most mail-order nurseries are located in cooler climates - their planting season is longer than that of someone who lives along the Gulf Coast, for example. For the supplier, June isn’t too late to plant a Stella cherry but for me, it is. Anything that shows up here after June 15th might as well go straight into the compost pile or something because chances are better that it won’t live. Yes, my Stella cherry, which arrived here the first week of July, is now no more than a four-foot tall, $20 stick in a pot.

The second thing to remember about mail order is to be prepared. You better have a place to put all those little “sticks” when they come in if you expect them to revive. Even if you just “heel-in” a small tree, that’s better than leaving it in the shipping plastic for three weeks until you have time to dig a proper hole and plant it.

You might also consider fall planting if you’re planning a mail-order yard. Nursey suppliers aren’t as busy then so your orders are usually processed in a more timely manner. I’m also told that in some cases, it’s better for a plant to go into the ground in the fall, where it will have plenty of time to re-establish a root system before sprouting again the following spring. And in the instance that you order something that can’t be shipped until spring, you got your order in REALLY early!

If you have a mail-order gardening tip, send it my way. Perhaps we’ll try it out and let you know how it works!

~ .\\

© 2001-02
MoodyDesign