"DigitalVinyl" wrote in message I suppose that
sales person is supposed to study every plant they sell
and every bug, disease and bad human practice inflicted on each one so
they are prepared to play plant doctor for the public.



Sadly in my youth (30-35years ago) I worked for nearly 5 years in a
Rhododendron nursery and still don't know what is currently "attacking" my
own Rhodies.....The owner if any hint of disease showed up simply trashed
the plant and any others in close proximity.....I hesitate to trash my
entire back yard and my assorted 25year old rhodies....He'd also on occasion
would clear an area, cover with plastic and inject "chemicals" to purify the
soil or kill the undesirables...again not a viable choice here....on a
humorous note he originally just tossed the sick and maybe sick plants over
the bank or in his dump.......The whole neighborhood soon discovered this
gold mine of "free plants" and soon peppered the place with rhodies (that
neighborhood is still rather pretty to this day), since he didn't really
want a neighborhood full of potentially diseased plants he took to cutting
them off at the root ball....not a nice man at allG.

This spring at HD I saw 5gal rhodies marked down to $5.00, nice looking
plants but past the bloom.....I asked the clerk about the plants mostly
because the size and price was almost too good to be true (both types were a
white and both were ones I had burlaped by the thousand years ago)...anyway
she said "both are only $5.00 but she didn't know why the manager priced
them so low, there must be something wrong with them"....I just smiled and
picked out my plants, he was simply dumping past bloom plants....Rod