Be nice to know what the 4 varieties are Lowes…
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Green Id recon
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Red Delicious, Yellow delicious, Granny smith…and then pick one. 
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Yes- 4 mystery apples on a mystery rootstock what’s not to love 
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Of course it’s probably mislabeled and what you actually get is an ornamental crab apple.
I bet the “recommended spacing” is something like 3 to 25 feet too.
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Ok, so this one’s on me. I went to Tractor Supply yesterday and saw they had some fruit trees out for $15. I was in need of a pear rootstock, but I didn’t want to fork over for shipping, so this seemed like it could be a good solution. I picked out the nicest looking one and put it in the cart. I was looking at it again today, and it looked much wrinklier than I remembered. Scratch test in several locations was green but dry, so definitely dead. Ok, no problem, so long as the rootstock is still alive I have what I need. Nope. The rootstock was clearly dead for much longer! Brown, brown brown. I should have been a little more careful in my assessment, it seems.
I did get some useful info out of this, though. I called the supplier (DeGroot) earlier to see if I could find out what rootstock they were using, which is calleryana seedlings. Not my first choice, but it would have been good for my purpose.
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You ought to take it back and get a refund, or a replacement at least. Was this a potted tree or a bare root in a bag?
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Bare root in bag. The medium is nice and moist, so I’m thinking it was dead when it got packaged for distribution. I’m thinking about returning it. The store is just far enough away that I’m not sure it’s worth the trouble.
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OK, I know what you’re talking about. Every year they have the usual bare root bagged trees- Red Del and Honeycrisp apple, Blue Damson plum, Redhaven peach. I don’t recall what pear they sell unless it’s Bartlett.
The closest TS to us is about 22 miles. I’d probably take it back only if I had other business in town.
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It’s Kieffer pear. I bet part of the low cost is lax QA/QC.
I bought one last year and had no issues. Thanks for finding out what the rootstock was. 
I searched around and found no reference online. I also picked up a Methley plum at that time.
I believe TSC do not allow returns if I remember properly. For the deGroot warranty you needed to keep the receipt and tag.
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Aha! That’s what I needed to hear! I didn’t even think to look for a warranty.
I was surprised that I a) got someone on the phone without any recordings and b) she had the information on hand to answer my question about rootstocks. Pretty great customer service.
Does anyone happen to know the nursery supplier for the bare root fruit trees sold at Food Lion grocery stores? I asked via their website but was told they couldn’t provide that information as it is proprietary. Here is a picture of a tag.
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I bought Moonglow as well, from Food Lion. Flip over the tag, Berry Family Nurseries. I already cut all the weird bits off and grafted to something else. It was a strange tree, but now it is five trees and the one is pruned properly. I was not successful finding Moonglow elsewhere. I bet this is also on callery.
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Thanks. I checked out Berry. Seems like a big outfit. I guess I will find out in due time. I did contact metrolina, a big Walmart supplier and found out that this years Kieffer pears are on ohXf87 and their Arkansas Black apples are on m9.
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The local Home Depot in Anchorage has
those little $10 boxes with plant starts-
blueberries, currants, raspberries, blackberries, and of all things hardy kiwis- the hardy kiwi doesn’t name a variety but it says self fertile so I assume it’s Issai. Issai won’t survive here. One of my friends had that variety and it died the first winter. I don’t think the blackberries will do well here either.
The plants are sprouting (they are wrapped in a white plastic bag), and they definitely aren’t getting watered. About half of them look to be dying and wilted over. It’s about a month too early to be able to plant anything. The average joe shopper isn’t going to buy a plant that has to be nurtured indoors for a month.
Inappropriate plants for the area, too early, and not taking care of them…Big box fail!
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TSC here has them too. i got to them before they started to grow and grabbed some blue potato seed, a beta grape and some garlic. stuck em’ in the left crisper drawer. hopefully they stay dormant for another 3 weeks. its crazy what they wind up throwing away because they delivered them too early. they should only get them may 1 for here but most of the nurseries that grow them are in s. new England and where ever DeGroot operates out of so they have to ship them before they come out of dormancy. ideally they should be stored in a dark, unheated shed outdoors until they can bring them out in late april to sell. my monty cherry was a $7 rescue from them. the whole 5ft. tree was dead except 1 lower branch. talked them down from the regular $20 to 7. chopped the dead limbs off atnd it took off from that 1 tiny branch. now its a multi branch 7’ shrub. at 3 rd leaf last summer it gave me a bowl of cherries. surprised these stores havent found a way to keep from losing this many plants. goes to show you how overpriced they are if the store can absorb those losses.
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This is at Costco. Looks like they simply stopped watering the plants. They are $8 a piece now. Some of their other plants looked in really bad shape.
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the waste at these places boils my blood!
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You should see the amount of plants get neglected and thrown out in the average grocery store. Pretty depressing how much we waste in the US.
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I noticed walmart got a big shipment of new plants in (bigger sizes) the other day when i was there. I think they were bonnie.
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