I still have a green gage lingering in my nursery that is actually something not even remotely related that I purchased years ago from Millers, one of several orders with trees not true to name. Apples were also almost as likely true to name as something else and always tiny, tiny, tiny. Plus their tree replacement policy was sham- sending me a seedling persimmon to replace a grafted tree.

Never had those issues with Stark. Individuals making small orders may have a nice experience with Millers, but they are always rated pretty low on objective surveys. This should be a change for the better.

Yes, what you do comes back to you. It explains why it happened in a nutshell. They could not mantain a business with that kind of service. I remember you talking about this before in our own reviews here.
With Stark they sent me plants way too early. The plants were great, but I will not order from them unless it's time to deliver. No more early orders from me. I had to find room in the house for the plants, and my house is FULL of plants right now! It was a problem. I guess with so many orders they want to get them out. Not sure? If I can find the plants elsewhere, I would buy it elsewhere. I like to pre-order and not have to give instructions when my zip code says it all.

Drew, there are lots of nurseries that will ship your trees when you want them. ACNursery, Cummins, Van Well, Trees of Antiquity, Raintree amongst others have been accommodating to me in this regard.

Yeah i learned to tell them when is best, but some like Raintree and others know when to send stuff.
I may order from Stark again, but I do look elsewhere, mostly because of price, and such. I don't really buy that many plants either.
Did you see the thread where a nursury just sent out fall trees to zone 5? Now that sucks! It's now too cold here in zone 6. The ground is starting to freeze. In this area anyway. Ice is forming on the lakes around here. This is really early, but more like the fall I remember as a kid.

It would suck to get trees when the ground is too hard to plant them. It can happen on either side, of course, too late fall or too early spring, but you can't just leave trees in most garages over winter. If you are going to order fall trees in a zone 5 you take your chances. Oct. was pretty warm so trees didn't go dormant early, at least around here.

I can imagine it would be very difficult for nurseries to dig up trees, bundle them, take inventory and then be mindful of weather conditions of every little shipment.

I'm in the midst of a very robust planting season- seems the great crop has spurred interest in planting more trees and I'm selling most trees I have that are ready to sell. I expect even small tree nurseries are seeing a surge in orders, creating some chaos.

I can plant until the ground freezes (crust is fine) or heavy snow comes to stay.

You are right, this is a Nov. like times past. For fruit growers in the northeast it would be nice to have a few years of more "normal" weather. Spring also came in at a normal time here in '13