I ended up picking up 3 trees from my local Costco this year. Was not looking for fruit trees there, but they had them placed strategically by the main entrance so I took a look. To my surprise they had a good selection of varieties and labeled the rootstock as well. I grabbed a couple of apples on B118 and a pear. They were all bear root (roots in moist wood shavings in a plastic bag), and still very dormant.
So far they have been growing well. We will see how they survive my winters here, and eventually if they were labeled accurately. But for ~$11 per tree they appeared to be in better shape than many mail order trees Iāve gotten.
What made them so cheap Steve? That is so much below the going rate for BB trees. Were they leftovers or something?
Sounds like you got a good deal. If the labels were actually on the trees Iād guess your chances of the correct varieties is as good as anywhere else.
I confess to picking up more columnar apples this week from Loweās; they are branded Urban Apples so I know what Iām getting, and though they are a bit Charlie Brown from the months at the BB store they are basically just thin but quite alive. At what turned out to be about $6.50 a pieceā¦well, hard to walk away. So now I have 4 to site, the green ones which I like a lot and the birds never notice. They will likely line the driveway in full sun that has been wasted on a rather useless two foot stretch of grass.
I had gotten a containerized combo plum right off the truck from HD in early March (Beauty, Santa Rosa, Burbank, Italian, French) that was doing extremely well once it broke dormancyā¦the rootstock was a guess but the grafts looked good and as my first plum I figured what the heck, even if I end up losing a few grafts Iād have a dual tree. It wasnāt really root bound, I stretched a few out at planting. It grew out very nicely. But the frost April 29 while it was in full bloom seemed to kill it right back to the cambium. As to whether that was inevitable or whether there was a deeper issue with the tree Iāll never know. It did make me decide to start from scratch on the multi-plum idea, just in case.
I hope your trees do well, Steve! You are probably in a better starting point, planting them bare root, and with labeled rootstock you know more of what you have.
Not leftovers Appleseed70. Costco is a wholesale/membership place, and their prices are often quite a bit cheaper than regular retail. IIRC it was $11.67 per tree for single varieties, and a few bucks more than that for multi-grafted trees. These were very fresh, not seconds or leftovers that I could see.
I had not noticed Costco having fruit trees in past years. Perhaps they scored a particularly good deal this year?
Costco often gets deals that you can only find at the store (not on their internet site) that are insanely cheap. $11 for bare roots does not surprise me as thatās about what I pay wholesale.
My wife bought a set of Wetsuit seat covers for my truck for $12 that I couldnāt find on-line for less than $30. They were not available on-line from Costco. Tarps that cost $40 at Home Depot cost $12 at Costco.
But you have to factor in cost of membership. The nice thing is they pay their workers a decent wage unlike Walmart, which has healthcare subsidized by the American taxpayers- in other words their workers rely on the emergency rooms at hospitals unless they live in a state that has implemented the ACA. Poverty wages.
I got a nice bareroot Santa Rosa at HD for $11.50.
I went to Lowes and I saw they had 2 pallets of Santa Rosa. No other plum varieties. I thought it was humorous. First, it isnāt the best variety for the area. Second, where are the options? Then I went to HD and it was the same story, 2 pallets of Santa Rosa. I was thinking it was nuts and they would be on discount eventually. A week or so later we had freeze alert, so I checked to see if they had any marked down. They had some of the Santa Rosa plums 50% off. I looked them over and it appeared the discounted ones didnāt leaf out yet. Buds looked good, so I bought one. Itās been growing fine. In fact, Iāve already grafted another variety to it as a backup. I probably will add more varieties eventually.
I was impressed that Lowes had decent peach trees, even though they were old standards. They had Red Haven, Hale Haven, Elberta, and OāHenry. It is hard to find peach trees locally.
I am hoping my Loweās-bought (gift from hubby) peach is one of those that you list AJ. It was marked as a Belle but I donāt think it is; I have a feeling its Elberta. Two peaches ripening right now, already pretty red but still small, that I hope will solve the mystery.
Thatās a LOT of Santa Rosas. Guess its cost effective to ship in big uniform batches.The BB stores here on LI never ever have bareroot trees. Just containerized. Even my favorite quality nurseries only get in container trees, no bareroots. When I started growing fruit I had no clue that bareroot was better or even really existed because its all container here.
The one I got came from a nursery in Connecticut. The roots were in double bagged wet sawdust. The inner bag was cloth and the outer was heavy duty plastic. The bags were sealed tightly aground the trunk with a metal band to prevent moisture loss. The cloth bag provided cushion between the metal band and the trunk. I guess it works well. They had some at the store over a month and they still had leaves.
I am a frequent disparager of the Big Box stores for their many flaws and degenerative effects on our communities. For orcharding purposes, I especially dislike their purveyance of fruit trees which are often of low quality and come on undisclosed disease-prone rootstocks likely incompatible for the soils of the region sold in.
Yet I found myself at Walmart today shopping for cheap clothes. I never found a shirt I liked, but to my astonishment I did find these goodiesā¦
Left to right: Patriot blueberry, Blueray blueberry, Ouachita thornless blackberry, Reliance grape, and Niagara grape.
These are all varieties Iāve been gunning to get for years. Twenty-five ($25) dollars for the whole lot. Thatās five ($5) dollars a pop! You canāt beat that price. I happen to know that all of these varieties are reported as well-suited to my climateā¦ assuming Walmart has provided me cultivars that are true to label. All of the plants are showing fresh green growth and are well packaged. Itās hard for me to complain about this lucky strike.
Welcome to the world of Big Box fruit trees/plants! Iām just giving you a hard time- I know buying a few grape and berry plants is a long way from suggesting youāve had some kind of major change in opinion. Still, its nice to see you were open minded enough to give it a shot, so I sure hope everything you got turns out to be healthy and true to label.
I bought several things at Walmart this year that I was VERY surprised to see: A āWhite Donutā Peach (Saturn?), a French Improved Plum, and a Green Gage (who knows what its genises is). They also had a Loring peach, which Iād only seen online. Iām sure youāre not going to change you mind enough to start buying a lot (or any) of trees from big box, but even you have to admit its fun to at least see what they have! Good luck with your plants.
Iāve been to a couple of Loweās this week, and they seem to be out of everything but apple and some pears, as far as fruit trees are concerned. No cherries, peaches, nects, etc. Theyāre even out of the little 10 packs of strawberries to my dismay, as I wanted to pick up some Earliglowās. Oh well, ya snooze, ya lose. I was able to get a 10 pack of Honeoye from Tractor Supply today, tho.
And then the funnest part is finding out what youāve actually planted. The first sign will be if the peaches have the showy blossoms of those varieties. I think part of the reason the names get screwed up so frequently from these sources is the sorters are very low paid and just donāt care.
You are right to be suspicious of the āGreen Gageā. I suggest the odds are not good it is of that variety- but you wonāt know for at least 6 years!.
I will buy bulbs and ornamental plants from a big box, but my time, space and labor is too valuable to plant an unreliably identified tree, even if it was free. I felt the same way before I ever got into the nursery business, and I certainly donāt have a commercial ax to grind. Walmart is not my competition and most of their customers would never buy my trees at $300+ a pop.
Itās a crap shoot everywhere, just more so for the cheap trees at the big box stores.
3 years ago Costco had great trees, named varieties, named rootstocks and healthy. I got a few and they have done fine (too soon to say if they are true to name). But last year and this year Costco went with a different vendor, few variety names (āyellow peachā) and no rootstock info. Oh well.
If one has the time to take a chance, you can get some good deals. But I would not count on them for anything I really wanted to have growing at my place.
You can get good deals on most common varieties at HD or Lowes, but you run the risk of buying a mislabeled tree. Iāve bought several peaches over the years that ended up being nectarines and vice-versa.
As for Costco, the best time to buy their trees are when they come in.
My experience with HDās fruit trees in my area was not great. After I start to āhangoutā here, I learn how to pick fruit tree and start to realize how sorry those trees areā¦ (canker, disease, poor branch locationā¦)
However I found their raspberries are good and healthy, but they mis-label one of my raspberryā¦
I think the longer a tree is in the big box store the more likely it is to be incorrectly labeled. My first assumption is that the grower mostly does a good job and then all heck breaks loose at the store location. With that being said I am now the owner of a peach tree that had a Sunred nectarine tag. Most of my purchases have been correctly labeled.
Has anyone else notice a price increase on fruit trees this year at Lowes? All fruit trees are priced at 49.99 and I seem to remember pricing to be around $25 or $30 in prior years?
I have been at a few Loweās, and their regular sized apple and pears (that is, under 7ft or so) run about $30. Now if you get one of their monster 8ft+ trees, then theyāre about $50.
Iām just giving you a hard time- I know buying a few grape and berry plants is a long way from suggesting youāve had some kind of major change in opinion. Still, its nice to see you were open minded enough to give it a shot, so I sure hope everything you got turns out to be healthy and true to label.