Bit of a sad tale, I'm afraid. A female customer came into the nursery
today to tell us of two mimosa trees she'd bought two weeks ago, planted and
watched die. Honestly, within two weeks, two perfect, thriving, healthy
trees - dead. She was a bit annoyed.
Naturally, she was asked how she'd planted them, how she'd treated them
after planting etc. And the tale was this....her 'friend who knows all
about gardening' had told her that when she bought anything from a nursery
or garden centre, she should wash off all the compost in which it had been
grown and plant it bare-rooted to be sure of ridding it of vine weevil.
So she followed this 'advice' without question and certainly without asking
us if it was good advice.
So - her bare root mimosas drooped and drooped and drooped, so *then* she
cut them back really hard, thinking this would encourage them to sprout. So
they died.
When Matthew heard this story he told her that firstly vine weevils and
their grubs are not active now so she wouldn't have seen them and secondly
that we spend over £1k per year on nematodes which we use against vine
weevil. If only she'd asked.......

Capping this, Ray told me the story of a couple who marched into the nursery
a few years ago in a state of righteous fury - seriously annoyed. They told
him that having bought some plants from us they'd spent an hour or more
picking out insect eggs from the compost in which the plants were potted.
Ray scooped up a handful of slow-release fertiliser pellets and said "did
they look like this?" Guess the answer.

I suppose the moral of these tales, I hope, is DO ask your nurseryman for
advice if you have a good nursery from which to get your plants. You may be
lucky and get really helpful information from friends and neighbours but you
might be like our unfortunate mimosa lady and spend money killing plants on
their say-so!
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'