Blog Update!
For those of you not following me on Facebook, as of the Summer of 2019 I've moved to Central WA, to a tiny mountain town of less than 1,000 people.

I will be covering my exploits here in the Cascades, as I try to further reduce my impact on the environment. With the same attitude, just at a higher altitude!

Monday, April 16, 2007

Sending out an S.O.S.

Dead as a doornailMy tomato plants were delivered from Burpees last week. Now, I'm no plant expert but I do believe these fella's are all dead. All 7 of them look like this. One doesn't even look this good.

I haven't yet talked to their customer service about it, but I don't think there's much I can do to revive them. They haven't perked up but I wasn't expecting them too.

It's so disappointing. Does anyone have any clue as to whether or not these are salvageable? Can I just cut off the dead, withered foliage and hope it springs back to life, or should it just go into the compost?

Fortunately, our local nursery is getting in their tomato plants next week. I hope they can replace my lost heirlooms.

Evil, evil UPS.

Update 2:00pm
Well, Burpees says that all their plant shipments to WA and TX last week were damaged due to freezing temperatures. So, I'm getting a refund. I hacked down the old plants and am curious to see if anything grows from it as an experiment. But, I'll be definitely buying some new plants next week!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey there. I'm not an expert in gardening, but here's what my granny used to do when I was a kid (and I lived in Russia). Perhaps you are too late for that now, but maybe you can give it a try next year.

My granny would always pick out a few of the best of her tomatoes and let them rot on the windowsill. Once they were pretty much done rotting, the seeds were the only thing left on the plates. (I know it sounds gross, but thats the way she still does it). So then she would save the seeds and plant them indoors in boxes while it was still freezing outside. Then she would replant them around May or June.

Anyway, from what I learned from my granny I think you are better off growing your own seedlings... No UPS risk involved ;)

Greenpa said...

ouch. The word "toast" comes to mind. Looks like they got badly overheated in the shipping process. If the base of the plant has regained "turgor" after you watered them, there's some chance they might recover. I think I would snip off most of the damaged tops. Gonna be a crapshoot, though- I'd definitely plan on finding replacements.

QT said...

Yeah - I wouldn't bother. Tomato seedlings are pretty tender.

Tomatoes are the only thing I grow from seed. Next winter when you are bored to tears, check out the Seeds of Change catalog. Great heirlooms, one of my favorites that I grow each year is Thessaloniki.

El said...

Find replacements and get Burpees to pay for them, or have them send you replacements in a very timely manner.

I would try to cut them down, too; tomato seedlings are generally fairly weedy things that take a lot to kill. However, from your photos, they're looking really sad!!

Carol Michel said...

I concur, these are dead plants. Even if they had just a little life, you shouldn't have to pay for them. Good thing you are getting your money back!

Rechelle said...

Hey - April's sister here - sorry about the tomatoes, I have a few geraniums in the same condition.

Crunchy Chicken said...

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I hacked the plants down to their nubs and I tossed those that were truly dead. The others showed some life in them, so we'll see what happens to them.

I'll keep you posted on my Tomato Re-Animation Project (TRAP) :)

Anonymous said...

if they don't recover check out the seattle tilth plant sale. http://www.seattletilth.org/ They will have a large selection of heirlooms and open pollenated vegetable starts all chosen with seattles weather in mind. The tomatoes i purchased last year were delicious and prolific.