Why Buy Jung's Seeds?

[Colorado_west]

Good old days are gone. I use to go around the corner to the greenhouse and plants were 5 cents each. Bare roots. real good plants. (He died and the greenhouse disappeared.) He had wooden crates and just grab them out.

I see one of the catalogs had only $3 shipping for whatever you buy. But does not have peas or beans over that of packages. Baker Creek Pinetree more shipping and lower prices. What I do is go to the local seed house and buy in bulk what I can. I can get my seed there much cheaper usually. Rest I do have to order. I am lucky to be near enough to a seed house. BUT seeds are not cheap any more. Postage is terrible. I will save seed for everything I can. I will cut my seed cost what I can that way and buy what I need. I say things about the cost too. I grow my plants to save and get what I want. I have learned to make paper pots as I really do not like peat pots. Use for cukes and melons.

[svalli]

Closest garden center which sells seeds already at this time of the year is about 15 miles from us. I went there recently to look for slow bolting cilantro seeds. I purchased 3 packs of cilantro and 1 basil. I drove my husband's SUV, which goes about 19 miles/gallon, so going there just for the 4 packs of seeds was about $5 in gas.
If I had realized how expensive it is to drive around, I would have ordered the seeds.

I recently placed an $80 order on Jung and the shipping was $9.95. I think that it is quite fair, since I would not be able to find most of the varieties in the area Garden Centers and it would take me a lot of driving around to search for the seeds.

[OmahaJB]

At first glance $4.95 per order (up to $20), may seem like alot. However, I personally don't think it's out of line, all things considered. Others who know more than I about the cost involved for the seed houses have already spoken, and have explained it well.

As far as I'm concerned, if a company keeps the cost of seeds down around $2 or so per packet (for tomatoes and peppers), I can live with the trade off of paying $4.95 s/h.

Regarding Jung's specifically, their prices seem pretty fair. There is something I've wanted to buy out of the Burpee catalog for the past couple of years, but it was priced too high for my taste. This year Burpee's has it priced 2 plants for $17.75 not counting shipping. Jung's has the same plant 3/$12.95.
This year I'll finally be able to buy it thanks to Jungs. As long as it doesn't sell out beforehand.

My worry is that there may come a day smaller seed companies wont be able to stay in business for one reason or another. Perhaps it'll be cost-prohibitive or maybe some form of government regulation will cause them problems. Or maybe not enough of the video game generation will be as interested as they 'replace' us, causing some seed companies to close their greenhouses. So I'm just thankful we have places like Jung's.

One great thing also, is that alot of sharing goes on with trades, so in tight years we may not be able to afford to buy, we can always trade with the good folks here at TV. Plus, we can always save our own favorites and not have to buy anything. I know how it works though. We all enjoy buying a few new varieties out of the catalogs. Whether we end up using them or not.

Happy New Year...Jeff

[Tormato]

Bark,

PM me with what you'd like from Jung's. I think I have enough room on my order, where it won't cost me anything more.

Tormato

[dice]

Someone could try it with free shipping, where
their seeds are priced as high as they need to
be to still make a profit that way. (It is just a
spreadsheet calculation. It has to be calculated
per individual product, based on size of average
order for that product, etc, complicated but not
undoable.)

The trouble is, they would lose on web searches,
where people immediately see the price per seed
packet and make a decision on that before they
know how much shipping costs. (Typical buyer doesn't
know what shipping costs until *after* they have chosen
what they want to buy, but they know how much the
seed packets are *before* they add anything to their
shopping cart.)

One way to get an edge is to sell bigger packets.
Even if the average home gardener is only going
to grow a couple of plants of a cultivar and really
only needed maybe 10 seeds at most, getting
100 seeds for $N is a lot more interesting than
getting 25 seeds for the same price, regardless
of shipping and handling cost.

[Miss_Mudcat]

I'm glad to see that most folks don't mind paying extra to get what they want. I certainly don't. I think that if "consumers" took on the role of "producers" for just one day, then they may come away with a different perspective, especially in the agricultural sector. Thanks Fusion for giving us a tiny glimpse.

Lisa

[AKButch]

I have gotten used to high shipping costs since I live in Alaska. I have also cancelled / or not ordered items when I see what the shipping charges will be.

I am in the process of ordering some 4 gallon plastic pots to do some container gardening this year, tomatoes and peppers, and narrowed it down two places I might order from. One place sells them for a buck apiece but their "shipping and handling fees are outragous. The other place sells them for 1.39 each with much more reasonable shipping prices. Buying the more expensive pots save me over $30.00 total price because of the difference in s&h. I am ordering 50 pots by the way.

UPS and Fed X Ground shipping is not available in Alaska so it's either the good ole post office (USPS) or Second Day air from UPS or Fed X.

You talk about expensive shipping!!! Order a couple packs of seeds and have then sent 2nd. day air! That will definately get your attention.

[jungseed]

Yes, shipping to Alaska is very expensive. It must raise the cost of living on everything for you guys.

Going the other direction here,

Thought I'd also mention that by the time you get your catalog. My boss has $3.18 invested in each catalog that is delivered to your door, with no sure return. That includes the layout and writers, printing and mailing. Now you know why they have to look so enticing.

[Rena]

Originally Posted by jungseed

Yes, shipping to Alaska is very expensive. It must raise the cost of living on everything for you guys.

Going the other direction here,

Thought I'd also mention that by the time you get your catalog. My boss has $3.18 invested in each catalog that is delivered to your door, with no sure return. That includes the layout and writers, printing and mailing. Now you know why they have to look so enticing.

and we thank you for all the Vegetable Porn

[Granny]

I somehow forgot when I ordered seed last week and the week before to get any beans or cucumbers. And the daughter wants some mustard. So, I've been comparison shopping between Seeds of Change, my neighbors up at High Mowing here in Vermont and Victory.

I've ordered from Seeds & High Mowing before and had wonderful luck with them, but Victory has larger seed packs while High Mowing sells the beans that I had such marvelous ROI from last year. Very tough call . . . .

[jungseed]

Rena, you just may get me in trouble. I don't think laughing out loud at work is considered a good thing. But it was funny!

[Fusion_power]

Lol Jungseed, you are out of touch. Hortosexual porn <aka seed catalogs> has been making the rounds for a while now. Most of it is in glossy ink with photos of things like tomatoes in their birthday suits, beans wearing tophats, and modest miss melon covered in mesh. You might want to do what one gardenweb person recently did and "come out" of the garden shed.


Rolling Laughing!

DarJones

P.S., if you want to save money, combine all those catalogs and get things down to just one business and just one catalog.

[dice]

A postage anecdote from decades ago: a contractor was
building something (probably not a road) somewhere up
in the middle of Alaska. He had to get 40,000 pounds of
concrete (in bags on skids) from Anchorage to the building
site. Neither UPS, nor FeDeX, nor regular heavy hauling
freight companies delivered in the area, so the only choices were chartering a plane and flying the stuff up there, cost
$250,000, or mailing it (there was a nearby village with
an official US Post Office).

So they sent it Parcel Post. Postage was somewhere around $11,000.

[AKButch]

Originally Posted by dice

A postage anecdote from decades ago: a contractor was
building something (probably not a road) somewhere up
in the middle of Alaska. He had to get 40,000 pounds of
concrete (in bags on skids) from Anchorage to the building
site. Neither UPS, nor FeDeX, nor regular heavy hauling
freight companies delivered in the area, so the only choices were chartering a plane and flying the stuff up there, cost
$250,000, or mailing it (there was a nearby village with
an official US Post Office).

So they sent it Parcel Post. Postage was somewhere around $11,000.

Yes, I'm sure that was many many years ago since the shipping was only 11 grand!

I don't even want to know how much that would translate out to these days!!! Very interesting tidbit of info tho . . . Butch

[dice]

"Yes, I'm sure that was many many years ago since the shipping was only 11 grand!"

Might have been $14000. I'm a little fuzzy on the details
this long after, but that was the essence of what happened.
(They needed a big plane to haul all of the weight they
had to freight in to do the job, or a lot of trips in a smaller
plane.) USPS ended up having to pick up most of the tab
for the air freight.