North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lon J. Rombough" <lonrom@hevanet.com>]

Title: Re: [NAFEX] properly hardened off plants

Depends on the plant.  Newly rooted kiwi are pretty tender, not just to cold, but to damping off and such.  A reputable nursery wouldn't send freshly rooted kiwi plants.  They would grow the plants for a while to allow them to develop enough and harden so as to survive early handling better.  I knew a place that regularly misplanned stock and had to rush through kiwi plants that had been just rooted.  The amount of dieoff in the orders was pretty bad, on the order of a third of the plants, if not more.

> Sorry, I think the mistake was in putting them out in the cold, and that a 
> refund would not be reasonable.  A nursery can try to write directions for 
> every situation but it doesn't seem to me that that would be necessary in 
> this circumstance. Potted plants, by the way, are an extra expense in labor 
> and materials, allowing a buyer a great advantage in being able to plant 
> out at any time. If its the nursery I think it is, I am amazed at the low 
> prices for potted kiwis and am afraid that they will some day go the way of 
> other nurseries with low prices. Hope you didn't buy a lot of them and that 
> your losses are not too costly. If however, it is a retail nursery that 
> should be used to dealing with the average customer, and you paid a high 
> price per plant, then maybe that would be different.