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Seed surprises this spring?
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Posted by calliope 6 (My Page) on Fri, Jun 26, 09 at 23:18
| Had a good spring growing season, decent sales season so I can't complain. But I'm curious to see if other growers noticed some unreliability with their seed labeling, or plug orders.
A good deal of my line is pre-sold, so I expect to get what I order and if I don't then 'you know what' rolls downhill. I based a whole line of plants this year on a particular palette, so that everything this particular client needed was already coordinated. IOW no matter what their customers chose from the line offered, it would go together. My picotee lisianthus I ordered by plugs ended up being snow white. OK........... I can live with that. Then another line of annual chrysanths were suppposed to be white, ringed with yellow and ended up every shade in the possible rainbow. Then we come to the giant, vivid purple zinnias and they ended up being lime green. I always pull out a small amount of whatever I am growing to stick samples of it in my own gardens to see what their performance really is, and as a control in case I get feedback from end-users. That way I know if the issue is the plant or their gardening. I'm just trying to get a handle on what part of the chain this is occuring. Sloppiness in the seed production..........some of it in the packaging, some of it at the plug production end? If these were sitting at a retail outlet, it wouldn't be so much of a deal......but it's really embarrassing to have a customer print up flyers and order sheets and then ship them something else. Anyone else have the same issues?
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Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Seed surprises this spring?
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| a bummer having an important question swinging in the wind girl. There are a plethora of know it all eedjits that would benefit from what you have to offer. Sorry. |
RE: Seed surprises this spring?
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| LOL..........Thanks. Going pre-sold is great as long as you are selling what you advertise. I was a little embarrassed when they all bloomed. |
RE: Seed surprises this spring?
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| In our experience, it can happen anywhere along the line, and I expect it will get worse in the future. It's all about quality control and inventory management. Throw in the human component of one person along the line having a bad day, distracted by a phone call, a question, or just being too busy because they are doing the work of two people due to downsizing in the industry. In our plug operation, we have at least a dozen checks along the way to prevent mixing of inventory, both at the seed level and once they are plugs, but nothing is 100%. At least a dozen times a year, we will be contacted by a seed distributor, letting us know a seed lot they shipped us was contaminated by them (or the originator). If you look at how many times a seed lot is handled by the time it is harvested, to the time it is a blooming plant, I'm frankly surprised we don't see more mix-ups than we already do. |
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