Getting Plants in the Mail

Here’s something you might not know about the plant industry: millions of plants are shipped via Fed-Ex, just like DVDs and important papers.  There are growers whose entire outfit starts seedlings or cuttings and sends them on to nurseries and cut flower growers to continue working with.  For the most part, we grow our plants from seed, but some varieties are so slow or difficult that we cheat a little and buy in from these “plug producers.”

Our scented geraniums arrived to us as plugs and came from cuttings.

Lisianthus is a difficult one to grow from seed; I purchased 1800 plugs this year.

So how do they ship them without ruining the plants? In slotted cardboard, with a hairnet covering the trays. This keeps the plants in their own cells and everything from flying around. Every tray has its own little compartment.

Mid-May we will be receiving our mum plugs too and some helleborus plugs. It is pretty amazing and not something you imagine when the FedEx truck goes by–it could be filled with little baby plants!  I am friends with a grower whose cut flowers travel the country (and the world) by direct airplane flights.  That’s crazy to consider also.  One-way ticket to Los Angeles for flowers?  It’s amazing the things that happen before flowers reach your vase.