Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Hirt's is a sorta hands-off 'nursery'. They'll sell you whatever you want to buy from them, whenever you want to buy it. There's none of that pesky 'hey, by the way, blueberries do best when planted in spring or fall, so August might not be the best time to buy...' or 'gee, you're in USDA zone 6, you need to make sure you choose plants that can handle that climate.' No, Hirt's isn't about helping you buy the right plants, they're about selling seeds and plants to people either educated enough or naive enough to not need any guidance.
If you know what you're doing, this is good, because it saves you the time and effort of going to a garden center, talking to the employees, weighing what you want against what they have, and so forth. If you don't know what you're doing, you're going to end up with a lot of dead plants.
Take, for example, the Top Hat Dwarf Blueberry. Hirt's says in the product information that it's self-fertile, not requiring another plant of a different cultivar to produce berries. This is technically true, and a healthy Top Hat will give you a few blueberries even if it's the only blueberry plant on the block. However, if you want enough blueberries to make it worth the effort, you need two plants of different types that flower at the same time.
Similarly, Hirt's only includes the most vague of vague plant care instructions. If you blithely follow them, waiting a few days to let the plant recover from its travel then plunking it into your garden, you're probably going to have a dead Top Hat plant sooner than you'd think. Blueberries require ridiculously acidic soil to thrive. Hirt's puts the burden of research squarely on your shoulders, without even pointing out which plants are finicky and merit some research before you attempt to grow them.
And, of course, Hirt's plants rarely arrive in good shape. My little Top Hat Dwarf Blueberry plant arrived with dead branches, damaged leaves, and signs of poor soil pH and nutrient levels. While i could go through the return process, my occasional experience with Hirt's over the years doesn't lead me to believe that the end result would be the delivery of a healthy plant. This poor sapling of mine is a guinea pig, and given that, it made more sense to buy a cheap plant from Hirt's than to spend the extra few dollars and gasoline to go to the local nursery to buy a healthier plant. In a year or two, when i've gotten the hang of blueberry care and want to put a few into my garden, i will certainly not purchase my plants from Hirt's.
So if you've done the research, know exactly what you want, and are willing to get a malnourished and mildly abused plant, shop here. If you're just thinking, 'ooh, a little bonsai blueberry plant, that'd be awesome!', save yourself the money unless you're willing to spend a bit of time rehabilitating the plant and don't actually want more than a handful of blueberries a year.
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Product Description:
Top Hat Blueberry simply has to be seen to be believed. Here is a beautiful, moundshaped, compact shrub that is ideal for containers and small spaces, loaded with so many flowers in spring it looks like a white-flowering heather, followed by hundreds of delicious full-size blueberry fruits that make it doubly decorative. Top Hat is also becoming a favorite of bonsai enthusiasts, since the plant so easily allows itself to be restricted in a bonsai dish and shaped into a decorative bonsai accent, even flowering and fruiting as a bonsai accent. Developed from a breeding program at Michigan State University by one of the country's leading blueberry specialists, plants are cold hardy and easy to grow. Round, firm, flavorful fruits are a dusky blue just like those you find in the stores - perfect for fresh eating, making jam and baking into muffins or pies.
Hardiness Zone: 5-8; hardy to -25 F
Size at Maturity: 2 ft. by 2 ft.
Soil Preference: Acid 4.5 to 5.5 pH
Light Needs: Full sun or partial shade
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