mskitty38583

whats real bad??? when you walk through the "other" store and tell them they have scale on their cyads and palms, they tell you that the stalks of the palms and cyads are suppossed to shed.???????? i look at them and tell them ok, scale is a bug, not a shedding problem. or when your walking around and someone ask the associate for help and the associate says i dont know. do yall find yourself jumping in and answering the question for the undertrained associate? it really makes me mad when this happens and the customer is a little elderly lady who has a hard time walking let alone trying to plant something in hanging baskets. and what makes me madder then that ...when the associates tries to get that same little elderly lady to buy things that she absolutely doesnt need for growing petunias in hanging baskets, just to make their sales look good. oh i just want to smack some people.

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damaclese

You should see what they do here in Vegas Richard its a crime so much for are being stowerd of are planit ie. plants the put the rose plants out on to the hot sidwalk right in the sun then only wate them ones in a wial. they always look heat stressed they have the gall to try and charg you full price for them when they arnt praobly even going to live throw the transplanting
its at times like that i have to just let go and let god if u know what im talking about

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Richard

That's disgusting.

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Gardener972

The third week of April this year I was in the orange store looking for caladium bulbs because you're not supposed to plant them here until around the 1st week of May or they will rot in the ground. I was told they were in the process of putting them in the trash compactor and if I caught them I might be able to get some. Sure enough, two minutes later, they wouldn't have been in there! To beat that, I was charged FULL price! Go figure...

Another time in July last year at the orange store, I went at night and they had just put out aspisdistra out front, facing the brutal west sun. I told them they are shade plants and if they leave them there they won't sell any because they'll all be burned to crisp. They listened.

Why are these types of people working in a plant department anyway? They make the ones that know something look bad!

Oh, and yes, I too have answered customer questions that the sales people don't know.

Dean W.

Gardner, did they say why they were throwing them out?

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Gardener972

Yeah, they said it said on the package to plant them until the end of April and they wanted to make room for new merchandise. I told them that caladiums weren't supposed to go in until the first of May but they said they were only doing what they were told. I went over to another non-chain nursery and they had bins full of caladiums still!

They should hire us people that know a little about gardening as consultants!!

Dean W.

How unfortunate...

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Richard

Actually I work in the garden department of an orange box store in San Diego, CA. Most of the customers know me and trust my judgement. Today though, I asked a new customer if they needed any help selecting fruit trees for their area. He turned around and said "If you work here, you can't possibly know anything about plants" and then turned away. One of my regular customers was standing near by and we both had a good laugh.

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Gardener972

Exactly what I'm talking about! You have to prove yourself and it shouldn't be that way!

mskitty38583

"If you work here, you can't possibly know anything about plants"


wow! what a compliment to anyone who works in a garden center or nursery and knows about gardening and plants. but a lot of the time its true. most of the people at these places would not know a dogwood tree from a palm tree, which is sad. if they did know more and could help people, the store would make more money and they wouldnt have to throw away half of their plants at the end of the season.

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rain forest

i work for royal parks...i love plants but when you deal in thousands upon thousands of them you become blaise after a while they become like any other commodity "sad to say" ..as for knowing a dogwood from a trachy! that's simply not true, a lot of the guys & dolls have an amazing knowledge for all the obscure types of plants ....remember one plant my have hundred of varieties

mskitty38583

come vist the walleyworld in my town....you would see what i mean. lol!

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rain forest

come on get a reality check here please ...you my like fish but if you had to gut them all day for a living you'd soon change your tune!!! these people don't walk around with a basket leasurly pick flowers for the table...it's not Mary poppins

Richard

But the employees they are talking about only have shelf-stocking skills: knowledge of horticulture is completely lacking.

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rain forest

most of the advice we give out gets ignored anyway Q will this oive tree grow on my stoop A. no it needs full sun ...Q why did my olive tree die on the stoop?

vicman2

Great forum. I'm new to bananas having just purchased a 5' green banana from Home Depot and 4' Red Leaf from a local nursery. I do not expect great advice from retail places. I come to forums like this one. I have had some success with Bamboo's and Palms thanks to advice from the various online forums. I live in Victoria, British Columbia which is on the edge of the hardiness range of bamboos, palms and bananas. The various municipal districts in this area have full time gardeners that look after their tropical plantings. These people are trained horticulturist and earn $20 to $30 per hour plus benefits. The people at Walmart, Canadian Tire and Home Depot earn around $10 to $15 per hour and are expected to know hardware, plumbing and gardening. Buy your plants at these places and search for advice elseware. Home Depot has a one year warantee-so save your reciepts.

I live near the Butchart Gardens (500 metres away but am 60 metres higher in elevation) I get more frost days than them. Much advice is very site specific and you have to have some common sense when applying advice.

damaclese

Bad language only makes people not listen please Be kind i think as adults we can all talk with out resorting to disrespectfully discourse

i would ask this person why this topic makes you so mad that you have to rebuke people with such anger remember the vast majority of people here on Bananas.org are Farly experienced armature gardeners and do have a some knowledge of plants and their care

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MediaHound

Pauly, I think rain forest was referring to the uneducated people at the garden centers, not the members here... regardless, I have deleted the post as it was a bit vulgar and obviously the meaning was confusing.
Cheers guys

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microfarmer

I gave up on asking for advice from the box stores. I dig up my own and run with it. I also help people in the stores with plants I know about.

I put the lime in the coconut and mixed them both together...

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