SEEDLINGS
*** UPDATE September 29, 2024 ***
Beginning in the spring of 2020, and in response to COVID-19, I began offering seedlings though my "Plant-Mobile" service. This was a no-contact delivery system, which involved me driving to up to 10 locations throughout the state of Utah each spring, dropping off up to 3,000 seedlings total over the course of a month or so in May and June.
Regrettably, beginning in 2025, I will no longer be able to offer this service, with this exception:
Each order must be for a minimum of 600 seedlings
Each order must involve no more than 50 varieties total
Each order must be placed before the first day of Spring (that is, before March 20, 2025)
Each order must be coordinated with a single contact person
Each order must involve one drop-off location on a single, pre-arranged date
This, in a nutshell, has been the primary issue for the past four years:
"If I were able to read the minds of other people from 300 miles away and 60 days in advance, I could be quite wealthy".
Yes, you inferred correctly: with seeds of more than 3,000 tomato varieties available (as well as 400+ pepper varieties, and many more), a number of people seem to expect me to automatically, "magically", have (for example) 20 seedlings of the variety Green Zebra ready for them on Mother's Day, with literally zero advance notice, and delivered from three hours away with no planning.
Very few people have been taking advantage of my offer to grow seedlings of just about any variety they want from my inventory, as long as they place their request before April. So, I've been doing the VERY inefficient shotgun approach: simply dropping off a few dozens seedlings at a number of locations, hoping that people will be interested in purchasing them. This has been a money pit (and "time pit"), to put it mildly.
Following are some of the serious considerations in my making this very difficult decision.
-- My vehicle is nearly 25 years old, with about 240,000 miles on it. Several thousand dollars worth of repair work is needed; but I can neither afford to have the work done, nor afford to replace it.
-- Driving 4,000 miles each spring to deliver seedlings comes at a very high cost. At $3.55 per gallon (today's average gas price in Utah, per AAA), and a vehicle that gets only 14 miles per gallon, the price for gasoline alone is over $1,000.
-- Other supplies (potting mix, pots, trays, lights to raise seedlings, electricity to heat the low tunnel, etc.) to produce seedlings for other gardens comes to well over $1,200 each year.
-- The effort, energy, and time that it takes to produce 3,000+ seedlings each spring for other gardeners sets me back by a month or more for preparing and planting for my own seed production project.
-- I have been spending up to ten hours per day responding to emails, text messages, and phone calls, along with all the planning and logistics of scores of special orders, nearly all of which have been made several weeks after the published deadline.
-- In March and April, I spend up to 18 hours per day, every day, filling seed requests from gardeners around the world.
Clearly, I am spread way too thinly, and something must give. I simply cannot afford to hire any helpers, other than on an occasional, very short-term basis.
Here is the situation today (September 29th): there is the potential for frost in the forecast within 1-2 weeks; but there are still vines of more than 200 varieties of tomatoes that have not yet produced a single ripe tomato. This is no big surprise, given that it took me until May 29th (that was 123 days ago) to finally finish planting all the tomato seeds into plug trays indoors for my massive seed saving project. Then it took me until June 24th (that was 97 days ago) to get the last of the tomato seedlings transplanted into the garden. And the majority of those transplanted seedlings were very small, just 3-4 weeks from seed sowing, rather than the 8-10 weeks that is so much better in this high desert climate, where the growing season can be less than 110 days in some years.
As mentioned on other pages here, every morning I wake up with well over 1,000 hours of tasks that "Absolutely MUST" be completed before I can go to bed that night. So I am constantly mulling over ways that I can save on time, procrastinate even more tasks, and simplify my life even more so that I can somehow find/"create" the time to catch up.
Hiring a helper is out of the question, for reasons discussed in a recent blog post titled:
Pareto Principle and Rare Seeds
I apologize for this further contraction of services (yes, I used to provide fresh produce for CSA's, farmers markets, restaurants, etc.). For nearly 15 years now, my ambitions have far exceeded my abilities and resources. Those who have not seen this operation first-hand, up-close and personal, can scarcely imagine what goes into producing and sharing seeds of 500 to 700+ varieties of tomatoes every year, along with everything else...
*** NO MAIL-ORDER SHIPPING OF SEEDLINGS WILL AVAILABLE IN 2024 or 2025 ***
I simply do not have the time, manpower, or resources to ship seedlings.
** Thank you for supporting preservation of rare and wonderful varieties of garden vegetables from around the world! **
