Victoria Clare30/1/04 5:22
11

Sacha wrote in
. uk:

shazzbat30/1/04 3:36

"Sacha" wrote in message
. uk...
A customer has just rung up to ask if we have our bedding plants in
yet - and no she doesn't mean primulas and winter pansies - she
means bizzy lizzies and antirrhinums etc.!

If you were too get some in which
presumably would be forced on etc, you could sell them, then when
they were trashed by frost,

And lose customers very quickly. ;-)

Here's a vague and woolly thought.

Bizzy lizzies, yes, understood - but do antirrhinums actually get trashed
by frost, or would they just sit there till it got warmer? Some of mine
are years old - are they tenderer as babies?

And what about sweet peas? Mine are quite big now in pots outside - when
should I plant 'em in the ground?

Matthew says no point until the soil temperature reaches 10 deg. and is
likely to stay that way. There is also the danger of them getting rotted
off by rain.
As to the customer wanting antirrhinums, even if planting them now was a
good idea, she would have no idea if she was getting a viable plant or not
because none of them are up. Once she's planted hers, they'll self-seed but
the ones we buy in as plugs won't be in for a while yet and we have to know
that they're going to 'do' after they're potted on. It's really not good
practice to sell a customer some baby plant that might or might not make it
into a bigger pot or into the ground.
While we sell trays or strips of bedding plants in those little plastic
pots, the smallest *individual* pots we sell are 7cm and sturdy little
creatures. ;-)
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)