The Lemon Fool

Gardening conundrum.

We ordered some spring onion seeds a while ago with a 2 month delivery date.

Something arrived today from China of some seeds originating in Malaysia, bearing the title given above. How peculiar!

The things look like some sort of seeds, dark brown, elongated and like small olives, about 8mm long.

We will try growing them and hope they are NOT some sort of biohazardous triffids or similar!

In my experience, cheap purchases from China which take months to arrive have been transported to the UK by piggybacking the parcels onto other, larger shipments which might pass through any country in the world. Thus, when I ordered a quid's worth of Chinese screws a couple of years ago, they arrived with additional customs documentation from Vanuatu and Uruguay. Much-travelled goods!

In this case, I'd be looking out for any declarations that said: "Shallots. Honestly, Mister Customs. And not bad things, no, honestly, not this time. No need to open this package, just send it on as usual. Will pay you next month."

PS: is this what you've somehow ordered? https://www.pinterest.com/pin/17170042299670016/

"Lost in translation" BJ

feder1 wrote:Gardening conundrum.

We ordered some spring onion seeds a while ago with a 2 month delivery date.

Something arrived today from China of some seeds originating in Malaysia, bearing the title given above. How peculiar!

The things look like some sort of seeds, dark brown, elongated and like small olives, about 8mm long.

We will try growing them and hope they are NOT some sort of biohazardous triffids or similar!

========================

i am all in favour of global trade , but spring onion seeds are readily available in the shops for not much over £1 .

jackdaww wrote:i am all in favour of global trade , but spring onion seeds are readily available in the shops for not much over £1 .

Ebay is rather good at telling you that your stuff will be dispatched from Europe within three weeks, and then sending it out instead from China in three months. Sometimes it never arrives at all. But the bottom line is that you've never lost more than a pound or two anyway, so you're not likely to raise a big fuss that might damage the vendor. (And if you do, he'll probably change his name every few months.) One of the perils of the new trading environment, I'm afraid.

BJ

ALERT!

This article from MSN says that China has been sending packs of mystery seeds to all 50 US states:

""In New Hampshire officials dealt with hundreds of emails and calls from concerned residents.

“I received this package from China. Unfortunately I through the envelope away. It said they were stud earrings. I had ordered onions from amazon and thought they got them from China. The more I looked at them they don’t even come close to onions I just figured they sent the wrong thing. No I didn’t plant or open the package. What should I do with them,” a resident wrote in an email.""

This is identical to the seeds description I posted at the top and luckily they didn,t germinate.

Apparently some seeds are an extremely dangerous ecological problem and therefore could be a way of waging war against us.