More grapes

Grapes came in finally a little after 1:00 this afternoon. I'm not terribly impressed. I know that "dormant" can look awfully dead....  but when one is snapped in half and the broken part is just dry and brown with no green, its not usually a good sign.  The other grape plant didn't look much better, when i clipped away a bit off the tip there was some green but it didn't look like a live green color.
Burpee guarantees their plants for a year, and in a few weeks i'll know if they are even alive, but it will be too late to replace them before the replacement plants will be acclimated enough for winter.  If they do survive but are off to a bad enough start that they will be too weak for this winter and i find that they have croaked in the spring, that might be a better time to turn to Burpee to honor their guarantee and send me replacements. I think it is a one-time replacement.

My other alternative is to take a refund and reorder next spring, putting me a year behind on growing.
If one of the plants lives (the order was a package of 2 though i only needed one) i'll ask for a half refund and go my merry way and maybe root a cutting from the live one for insurance.

It was raining out when i got the package and when i planted them so i didn't take pictures. But i will later and edit the pics into this post.  They had great looking roots. I'm not sure how to tell if the roots were alive, their packing wasn't very moist but i think it was maybe damp enough to keep things just ok.

I wish Burpee was like Stark's.... Stark's sent my stuff in a big, long box and not a paper bag. It was a sturdy paper bag, but a paper bag is a paper bag..... my ground cover fabric was sent in a box... and the paper bag probably would have been fine for the roll of cover. Funny how things work like that.

But far and away, my Stark's order was superior to my Burpee order. My grapes from Stark's are just about to break buds.  I can't wait till my blueberry plants have hardened off enough to plant out. The leaves are coloring up nicely.



Ok, here's pics.

The Edelweiss that looks bad...  this was broken in two when it came.

This one might possibly get somewhere:

Compare that to the Marechal Foch and Reliance from Starks' (Frontenac is taking its sweet time but looks like its about to get moving so i didn't photo it)

I tend to fret over things, so i hope something happens with my Edelweiss soon or i think i'll burst.

But here are the blueberries, getting used to full sunlight, Patriot on the left and Blueray on the right.

Oh, since i took the cover off the brassica row, i took a picture

The Red Russian kale is pretty looking, a couple dried right out a week after planting, so i put a couple cabbage seedlings in to replace them.

Since this has turned into a picture post, here is the poor little fig plant .  It has started to regrow some leaves in its joints and it looks much better now than it did out of the box:

It will live, but its going to look pathetic for a while.