i hate mail order but at $10 each in the store...

I place my "berry" mail orders today, hope they all arrive (put on there no substitutes and no credits so I can hope they obey) and hope they all grow as this will pretty much  round out the plantings for berries in my forest garden. Last year they substituted wild plums for several of my plants I ordered so I'm a bit jumpy about ordering anything this year.

I ordered 3 each of 5 kinds of raspberries to add to my raspberry patch, 3 fall gold, 3 fall red, 3 heritage (which are all 3 everbearers) 3 amber and 3 black hawk which are summer bearers. I'm very excited to get more raspberries as my best ones are my blacks but I love the reds and golds too..and only have a couple bearing.

I ordered 2 black satin thornless blackberries to add to the primocane Jan's that I put in last year, these are runnerless and have to be tip layered for propagation so that is great. Not sure if they might cross with each other, but oh well.

I ordered 2 Purple Juneberries to go with my 2 Serviceberries I put in last year. They are the same species so I'm wondering if they might also cross pollinate??

I ordered 2 more paw paw to add to the babies that are growing now. These ones I'm going to put on the edge of the actual "forest" north of the food forest garden to get some more food plants into the forest area that is already there.

I ordered 2 Hansen bush Cherries to add to the other cherries we have (2 sweet, 2 sour, 1 ornamental and several wild). I've never had the bush cherries but these are supposed to be large and quite sweet for pie type cherries, rather than the smaller bush cherries, we'll see.

I ordered 3 kiwi's to try here, a male and a female Arctic Kiwi Hardy and an Issai that is said to be self fertile but will also fertilize the female Arctic..they will go together over a sturdy arbor with some grapes and climbing roses in the forest garden. I've never had the smaller fuzzless hardy kiwis, but i'm looking forward to trying these, they are on the edge of their hardiness zone here so I'll have to protect them.

I ordered 2 golden Clematis Tangutica which I had before but they died when I attempted to move them..so I missed them and want them back.

a Blue fountain Agastache ..love agastache

12 creeping phlox as a ground cover under my walnuts trees.

40 liatris, just cause i like them so much, they do good here and they were SOOOOOOO cheap.

One blue Velvet and one blue Moon Honeyberry bushes, as they are supposed to be seedless and a lot like blueberries and my husband can't have the seeds, they bother him..so we'll try  these.

That about rounds out the orders for SO FAR this year..can only do so much with limited funds but do still want to buy some seeds and some plants for the pond, found a place i can order wild rice plants..which I want to get started as well as some others for my ponds..of course. In the future I'd also like to buy another apricot and some more nut trees.

still a lot of ice on the ponds, the ground is still solidly frozen and we still have a lot of  snow..even though it got to 58 yesterday and remained 42 overnight..chillier today and colder again next week.
Thunderstorms due in tonight so I'm going to go out and plant a packet of mesclun on a patch of bare ground I saw yesterday..can't have that bare ground out there !

Brenda,

Where do buy your plants?

i can vouch for the black satin blackberry. thornless and VIGOROUS. our vines grew 15ft+ least year and it was the first year i planted them. i even got a big handful of berries off the tip layered shoot. which btw were HUGE.

youll have soooooo many shoots to tip layer as well. i planted 2, and now i have 40 in pots plus the two originals.

if ordering online, make sure you google reviews on the nursery. some have great reputations and some terrible....

yes I am aware that some have terrible reputations..and a lot of them went out of business last year and all got bought up by  a company called Plantron (but if you look on the address you  can usually tell )..

Even the bad ones have some good plants ..and generally a good warranty..and some of the really good ones I have had bad experiences with, but generally good experiences.

Last year an entire order of 4 boxes of tomato plants came smashed to bits..they  refunded all the money and told me to try to save them..I managed to save about 1/2 of them and got all my  money back..so that was a good experience.

but when one co replaced nearly every shrub I ordered with "wild plums" I was totally irate..

I did call them and they did refund my money so I got 6 free wild plums..which I didn't want but planted into a hedgerow anyway..but I didn't get the plants I really wanted.

I don't mind so much when they do refund my money and are nice about it..but it sets me back another year trying to get the plants i really did want.

I have NEVER had a company not do me right by either refund or replacement though.

You got a lot of the same plants I ordered this year.  I've ordered from Gurneys, Bountiful Gardens, Arbor Day, and about to order from HoneyCreek-a subsidiary of Burgess, who also seems to own or have something to do with Gurneys, HoneyCreek and Henry Fields.  I did order a year or two ago from Autumn Ridge, which a lot of people had problems with, but I was overall happy with them.  The plants were all tiny, but all of them grew just fine.  Only one or two died, and that was because I planted them in the shade I think(planted before the trees filled out).  The best fruit tree deals as far as size-to-cost ratio are at Home Depot or Lowes when the fruit trees are 1/2 price in July, but they need some TLC usually.  Most the trees I've bought have been pencil thickness, but they were only like $7 each, so I think that's a good deal, even if you have to wait another year or two for it to grow up.  Here's a Black Tartarian in it's 2'nd year now, just flowering today!

well I had to pick up a few groceries today and when I walked down one aisle there was a plant display of raspberries and others..well the price was pretty good so I bent..

they had two kinds of raspberries that I hadn't ordered, so I bought 2 Royal and  2 Logan..they had some pixwell gooseberries also which I never have seen for sale in a store here before so I grabbed 2 of them, they already had some green sprouts going on them so I knew they were alive..

got some calla and canna lilies too..and then had to stop so I had some money left for the groceries I went after..