Getting ready for spring – shopping for the garden
Online shopping, and mail order, now mean you can buy everything from seeds and plants to a trowel or spade, right through to specialist and unusual tools from the comfort of your own home.
When ordering seeds, keep in mind some general guides. Order only enough seeds for your needs. Otherwise, you will be faced with entirely too many plants or with storing the unused seeds. Ordering just what you can use and handle is one of the toughest problems most gardeners face this time of year. First work out how many plants you'll need, then consult the catalogue description to find the germination rate, and how many seeds per packet. The germination is important, since if germination is low, you'll want to order more. Some packets such as geraniums may only contain five seeds, as they are quite choice and harder to produce. Others may contain hundreds of seeds - enough for several years!
Catalogues, and especially now online websites, may also be used for ordering plants that arrive in the mail later in the spring. This is a good way to find many new and unusual perennial plants that may not be available locally. This is especially true if you are interested in a certain genus or specialist niche of plants such as hostas or aquatic plants.
If you have good garden centres and specialist nurseries in your area, you may wish to check their listings first before ordering online. There is nothing more annoying than finding and ordering a rare plant online, only to find it later cheaper locally, and without having to pay postage!
When ordering plants there are several important points to remember:
- Order from reliable sources in order to get good value and plants that are shipped properly. Such sources are ones you may have used before, or had recommended by friends and neighbours.
- Beware of inexpensive plants. Price is often a good indication of quality and lower prices often reflect poor quality.
Garden shop photograph by Zanastardust, used under a creative commons attribution licence
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