North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>]

I bought several dwarf fruit trees from Stark Bro's - among other 
nurseries - last spring, which was my first experience with planting... 
pretty much anything. They were the last to arrive - much later than I 
expected - and I was very disappointed at the shipping, especially 
compared to the other nurseries. The trees were good-sized, but had been 
jammed into boxes with much splintering of limbs. There were a few small 
clumps of damp newspaper in the MIDDLE of the boxes, but not at the 
roots, which were bone dry.

I was pretty disgusted, and I sent them an email about it. But they told 
me not to worry about the dry roots, because they'd used some sort of 
special treatment on them. And every tree ended up growing just great. 
So I can't say I've really got any complaints, after all.

The only (minor) problem I've got is that I finally realized they use 
different common names for many of their varieties, so I'm never 
entirely sure what I'm getting. I've come close to buying the same 
variety twice, because Stark Bro's doesn't use the same name as everyone 
else. Well, I'm so new at all of this that it's surprising I haven't 
really had any big problems at all ... so far. :-)

Bill

--
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" 
Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night." - 
Charlie Brown, "Peanuts" by Charles M. Schulz