10% (Lowes, possibly HD too) coupons are a couple of bucks on Ebay… Any time I have a need to purchase $100 worth or more, I get one. Arrives as a PDF a few minutes after purchase, print, hand to cashier…
1 Like
Do yourself a favor. If you’re going through that much trouble and shopping online to pick up, use this sucker: https://www.lowescoupongenerator.com/
3 Likes
Last year a local Walmart had 100 or so fruit trees outside in April. A frost warning was issued one night I happened to be shopping there. I went to try to see if they had any trees I couldn’t live without and I couldn’t find them. I asked an employee who called a manager who told me to meet him by automotive. They had moved all of their STILL DORMANT trees inside their automotive department to protect them from frost damage. It’s great that they cared, but I wonder how much time they wasted moving those trees in and out.
2 Likes
Heh… Thanks!
1 Like
I am finding that I have a lot of mislabeled trees this year that were planted last year. I have two TruGold peach trees that came from Lowes (Garden Alive Nursery) that definitely are not TruGold Peach trees. I have one Home Depot Red Haven that is definitely not a Red Haven. I have a SureCrop Peach that was bought at a reseller in NC that is very suspect that it is a SureCrop peach. I ordered a Red Haven Peach from Stark Bros to replace the mislabeled Red Haven peach bought at Home Depot and got a Benton Dwarf Cherry (It was labeled properly just not what I ordered) as a replacement. When this type of thing happens you start losing trust … The good news is that I went to Lowes yesterday and they have agreed to take back the TruGold peach trees.
3 Likes
No such luck in TN. 
Keep watching…on the website it tells that they are doing a graded release. Most southern states first and working northward.
Future shipments will include central and northern states April - May. Stay tuned for future emails to come!
Stores are expected to receive our Dunstan chestnut trees, grafted female American persimmons, Oriental Persimmons and wildlife pear trees (either Dr. Deer pear or Thanksgiving pear).
I was in an Agway the other day trying to find big bags of urea, which the big boxes never carry. Agway is a suburban, rural hybrid that still serves farmers while getting most business in many areas from suburban home owners.
The fruit tree selection was better than Home Depot, with a nice mix of apples, well branched and running for $60. I was surprised to find Roxbury Russet in the mix. Of course they were untrained with codominant branching and the like, but most stuff that could be corrected.
However, the pear and plum selection was pretty worthless, with Anjou and Santa Rosa being among the few varieties. Nothing I’d want as a first choice and mostly not even worth growing in my region, IMO. I’ve never known Anjou to get up adequate sugar, and Santa Rosa is often an unreliable cropper and also prone to cambium burn this far north.
The main sign of hope was the wider selection of apples, which is becoming a bit of a trend with some big stores.
Wow that’s amazing. Are we the pioneers of a new American fad.
Agway is definitely a notch above Home Depot and Lowes. Their prices aren’t as competitive but they do carry specialized things like ProMix, Pine Bark mulch, a wider range of fertilizers, etc. I really wish there was one closer to me because i would definitely give them more business.
Poor variety selection seems to be common to all big box stores. They mostly feature old varieties like Bartlett, Moon Glow, Bosc, etc.
1 Like
The Home depot near me actually has decent selection, including some multi-grafts, Asian pears, Euro plums, etc.
The Lowes is more limited, but even they had some interesting options. I almost got a Toka plum there the other day, which would have replaced the Toka which died. This winter I lost the first two plum trees ever. I’m not sure why, but I suspect that it was something to do with planting them in fabric pots. That doesn’t seem to be a recipe for success, even though they do better that way (aside from the dying…) than apples, which I’ve since dug up and replanted.
Interesting isn’t quite the same as useful. I haven’t had much luck with Toka and other very cold hardy plums here- they seem more fragile than cots, and given the great range of J.types we can grow, why bother?
If they have E plums, I bet they are either Stanley or Italian- neither of which is quite worth their space here for me. Did they have any peaches besides Reliant? For some reason retailers around here think they are in Vermont.
That’s part of why I didn’t pull the trigger on it. While I think Toka is pleasant and distinctive, I decided I didn’t need another plum tree just to get it, especially since the space the old Toka was in was a bit tight. Maybe I’ll graft a branch of it in the future. The other reason was the car was pretty full 
They had those two- Stanley separately (a pic of a 2" caliper one in my Feb 24 post in this thread) and Itallian as part of a multi-graft). They had at least a couple others in the multi-grafts and I think 1-2 others separately (maybe Empress?).
I know I’ve seen Reliant, but I’ve also seen a lot of Contender, a pretty decent option. I’ve also seen Red Haven, which seems to be grown a lot, even though I haven’t been thrilled with it (though I never grew it myself, after tasting it from farmer’s markets and PYO).
1 Like
I purchased a couple trees from Agway a few years ago, but only after they went on sale, so that reduced the variety selection. Only still surviving tree is a Jonagold (correctly labeled).
2 Likes
Let me know if you ever want Toka scions.
1 Like
Just visited the “big blue” store…they have dormant blueberry plants for sale…packaged 2 per brown paper bag with the varieties on the front of one side.
Tiftblue and Bluecrop.
(Yeah…right…like that will work out well!) 
1 Like
Typical and sad!!!
Are those for the Mason-Dixon Line?
1 Like
Are they sitting in the 72° heated store, so they will be too leafed out to sit outside in the cold in a couple weeks?
Yep…both those things.
Varietal issues aside, it pisses me off how they get all those dormant plants in in February, leave them inside in the warmth, so by March 10 they have 12” etiolated sprouts that won’t survive if planted out in the 18° weather.
1 Like