Shipping Plant in the Cold

[LimnoMan]

I live in Illinois where it is getting down to about 10 degrees at night and need to ship some floating plants. I have received plants in the mail in moderately cold weather without heat packs and they have done fine. I am trying to decide on whether to buy heat packs to ship the plants or not. I have come across info on the web that says you don't need to use heat packs in the winter and also the opposite. An idea I had was to heat up a bunch of sand (boil it?) and throw it in the box in ziplocs. Has anyone done something like this? If anyone has experience shipping in the cold I would appreciate your opinion.

Thank You :coffee2:

 

[EQualizer]

i dont think sand would be a good substitute for a heatpack since it doesn't hold heat well! (its same reason why deserts have huge swings in temperature, the sand has a low specific heat, and therefore is more easily influenced by the temp.)

i personally think you should buy a heat pack....a frozen plant....would not be so good once its thawed again

 

[beviking]

Where are you shipping plants to? The dakotas are at or near 0 degrees F. The trucks are not heated. I'm with EQ. The sand would likely be cool before the package left the building (UPS, FEDEX, Post Office).
Unfortunately, I've only sent a few packages with heat packs so I can't offer too much advice. I actually sent a package to S.Dakota and I'm worried it will overheat because I insulated it so well. There are so many variables involved but I would say that you need a heat pack.
HTH

 

[saturday]

I'm in S.Dakota, and its been in the negetives (tonight -8), so I don't think you have to worry about your package overheating.
-freezing in S.Dakota