With the arrival of rain for the next 24 hours or so which will then be followed by below freezing weather Thursday night, it's finally time to end our shipping season. Thanks to all who have placed orders this year and came out to visit at our open house. The last of the orchid orders are on their way to their new homes. We did find a few that didn't get printed or shipped last week and got them out this week, so if you're expecting orchids and haven't heard from us and they haven't arrived, please let us know!
We still have a lot to do here; plants to get in the ground, gardens to clean up, and a poly house to get ready for winter! Finally having the poly house back up and in operation will alleviate some of the problems we've experienced with late cold weather. It's not as good as a heated greenhouse, but it helps extend the season on both ends just a little bit. It also provides shade in summer. The move to a new location, followed by serious health problems have really slowed down getting this project done, but we'll have it up before winter truly arrives here.
Once we're caught up with all the tasks we didn't get done yet, the website update will begin. Given the record number of crop failures and shortages we experienced this year from our suppliers, coupled with a couple of rough winters leading to crop failures on our end; we may hold off on opening ordering until a bit later in the season. Likely we'll slowly trickle new plants into availability as they arrive here at the nursery, and old plants we're growing on site as they emerge from dormancy. This will mean that ordering will start to open in March and with a more limited selection and new products getting added until shipping opens in May. Supply failures can still happen, but hopefully there will be less customer impact. We hate doing the backend work of refunds, and hate even more telling someone that really cool plant they're excited to receive isn't actually shipping.
I'll post an end of year update/wrap-up/review kind of thing and actually publish a newsletter in December. But until then, happy fall!
