Went to Walmart, Tractor Supply and Rural King today. All had dried out trees that looked like they were not watered for days. And many trees were on the ground with the pot filling spilling all over. No one must give a crap anymore.
…how is it in your local?
About the same. Home Depot had elderberry (one of the more ornamental ones on a cart with plastic around half the shelves… Trees were also a mess. The berries inside were all dried and probably dead from no water. Touched one and it was crunchy
Our big box stores are superior to our nurseries honestly. They carry the same brands of plants but are cheaper than our local nursery. Our population is high enough that big box stores can go through their inventory fast enough except for the bare root stock which I don’t think our nursery even carry anyway. The only one that is lacking is Costco and that is because they pull out a week before we are supposed to plant where we are. Every year we get herbs like basil from Home Depot or Lowes and every year they do great.
I wouldn’t say the big box stores are better than the nurseries, but ours are usually pretty well maintained. And when a plant looks bad, it goes to the clearance shelf, so big ticket items like fruit trees rarely look bad. My brother told me once that the wholesalers don’t get paid unless the plant sells (at least for Lowe’s/Home Depot in our area), so its in the best interest of the seller to make sure they are sent in good shape, because the store won’t really maintain them. Not sure if that is true though.
This is true and they call it pay by scan. There are items these big box stores that the big box store is expected to sell and make a profit but then there are the pay by scan items that they get paid when the purchase was. It is also the reason stores would rather trash the returned plants than resale them. Employees are not allowed to bring the trashed plants home, the store does not care since they got their money by the scan and the other guys have basically said to trash it.
At mine the flowers and annuals get all the attention… front and center with workers diligently attending them.
The fruit trees are on a pallet and forgotten at Lowes/HomeDepot… and put far away from the heavy traffic. My Rural King made a corral and they must have sold 500 or more trees and had to re-order more. Currently Apple and Pear trees are $25 there and folks have been buying them up except the ‘Asian’ pears which most folks think are probably bradford pears.
Tractor Supply got a small amount of trees and they sold fast… they did not restock and dont care to.
My Home Depots have mostly deep south peaches and nectarines…
FWIW Home Depot has a nice selection of fruit trees online and it says free shipping… so no sense wasting gas to go look.
One of my Home Depots have a pallet of totally dead fruit trees that are marked down 50 percent.
I saw something new this year… at Lowes. They have blackberries in 5gallon pots with a little tiny trellis for $30.
I also saw where Home Depot and Lowes have given up trying to sell blackberries and raspberries by name… They just say ‘Blackberry’ and ‘Raspberry’. Also strawberries have lost their names…now they are just ‘Strawberries’.
My Menards has ‘Columbia Giant’ blackberries in 3 gallon pots… they are not trailing. The card says that the berries are small and round. My guess is that they are Chester or something. I have no idea how they get away with it.
I did see O’Henry peach trees at Home Depot… first time ive seen them there but i heard that they carried them years ago.
So no real reason to shop box stores…at least here anyways…unless your box store carries something that you cant find online.
I mean annuals are money makers while perennials are not. Annuals you tend to need a lot of while perennials tend to spread. Annuals you have to come back every year for while perennial they buy it once. I for one am not a fan of asian pears. I like euro because they are much softer. In regards to the free shipping hopefully you get what you want from online. It has been my experience that many things on their website are higher priced than the store and they often times send you the wrong plants or a dying plant. I ordered greek oregano and they sent me Italian that was dying and a snake plant first. I got them to send it again and they sent two Italian oregano again. Some things like peat moss they will not ship due to weight.
Box stores don’t specialize in plants. The plants are just there to help round out their inventory to attract as many customers as possible.
Ours are more like $45. They do get bought up quick. I smiled all the way to the car last year when Lowe’s didn’t have a single fruit tree variety that I didn’t have either as a base tree or graft. Then again I suppose it’s just another confirmation of my obsession.
Yeah i know what you mean…i always scan the inventory of trees just in case theres something crazy like Honey Blaze nectarine or something ive never seen at a nursery.
Lowes has something called Gold Plum…i guess its from Vaughn. That could be that super pollinator that ive heard about but im not that into gold plums so im going to skip it.
I dont have a Costco or Meijer… maybe they got all the good stuff this year?
Many of my local Walmarts don’t carry large trees. Small barefoot figs marked down to $5 ($10). I picked up Olympian and Chicago Hardy. Got 1 gal Navaho blackberries for $7 that were just dry. Local Tractor Supplies been sold out of trees for a couple months. Costco sold out within 3 weeks of stocking. Varieties for Oklahoma were Wolf River, Pink Lady, Red Delicious, McIntosh apples, Contender and another type of peach, a nectarine, and allegedly a pear though I didn’t see any. Price was $25. No discounts since they went so fast.
Costco trees really went up in price. They used to sell them for around 17 and then they went up to 19 and now they are 25 than. Remember Costco is still a deal though despite the only rare apple I see on that list being Wolf River.
I was in NC one summer and Whole Foods had fruit trees for sale. They were in a big metal tub by the front door. They were labeled as " Apple Tree", " Peach Tree", " Pear Tree" and " Cherry Tree". That’s it, nothing about what variety or size tree it was. I thought that was odd and yet funny as well.
The ironic part is knowing Whole Foods they were likely expensive too. My family never shops Whole Foods due to price. They are about only good for amazon returns.
I think the biggest issue is that the employees are not properly trained on how to care for plants. They assumed that the three minute sprinkle was sufficient to water them, etc.
What pisses me off is when there’s a hose lying on the ground right next to the plants, that is dripping a little so it’s obviously turned on, but nobody has bothered to pick it up and squeeze the nozzle to water the poor things.
Or some clueless employee sprays the pot for two seconds, assuming that’s going to be enough to soak the rootball.
Big box stores local to me have the same issue. Mostly dead is slightly alive. I have nursed back to health many big box store poorly neglected and highly discounted (50% off or better) berry plants and in some cases the (at least) 2nd year plants still fruited later that same season. If I want to try a variety but don’t want to pay full price, I’ll wait a month or two and often there will be some on clearance for a week or so until they finally sell out.
Last year I purchased ten highly discounted bare root blackberry plants mid-to-late season which had been sitting on a store shelf in a bag without being watered for months. Even then, I found four survived and the total cost paid for the discounted ten plants was less than what it would have been to buy the four early in the season. Your mileage may vary.
This!
Oh yes, I agree. Whole Foods is WAY too expensive for me as well. I was vising my daughter that was living in NC at the time. I was driving by the Whole Foods store near her. I thought I saw trees near their front entrance clumped together. I turned around and went back to see what the heck type of trees they were selling at a grocery store. I was surprised to see they were fruit trees. Labeled with simple fruit names on the labels. Nothing more. I thought, " Who would buy fruit trees without knowing what type of ( apple, peach, pear, cherry) it actually is suppose to be or what size of a tree it will get to be?" I am not sure if they sold any or not.
I think I’ve only been to a Whole Foods grocery store maybe 3 or 4 times. Mostly because someone on this site mentions they have a certain apple variety in their local Whole Foods store. An apple variety not available around my area in the grocery stores or local orchards. An apple I would actually like to try before deciding to grow in my orchard or one that I know would not do well in my orchard. Just to say I tasted that apple.
I have never found any of those apples in the Whole Foods store near me.So it was a waste of time.
Again, I agree with you about their prices, YIKES!! I would see people with their carts full of groceries so someone , besides me, is supporting their grocery stores. I have not seen any of the Whole Foods closing down, so far.
The local grocery store does occasionally get fruit trees, but they are generic and do not specify variety on the most interesting ones (pawpaw, persimmon)
SE Mich
Well a month ago the stores up here started getting trees delivered and they were all dormant and tied up with string. Honestly my success rate with box store trees is easily 75%+ although I’ve noticed the fruit trees sometimes are a bit fragile. I mostly stopped buying them purely because of price and selection though. For some reason I’ve had the best luck at Walmart vs Home Depot or tractor supply (pirtle nursery trees are especially subpar IMO).
This year I just took cuttings of stuff in the home depot parking lot I wanted. I got free scion for Jonamac, Pink Lady, Arkansas Black and I think one other. They all look like theyre taking now. I figure between the trees I’ve paid money for that have died and the fact that 90% of my prunings are wood that was touching/overlapping I am well within my rights and entitled to take it. I dont expect much from the box stores but to be fair I rarely see a single dead tree in the lot anywhere at my stores. Now vegetable starts, those are pure trash and half dead before summer comes!