There may be something odd about shopping for garden supplies at tractor supply but they have everything. I’m not saying you will get the trees you will if you graft but check out a few things in the aisle this morning I thought somebody would like
Those big box stores get many people started in fruit growing, myself included. Then you realize the quality is poor and move on to healthy plants.
That is quite the variety! I dont think I have ever seen that many choices at our TSC. Now that I am more versed in things I generally dont buy from them or say Orschelns. I am always surprised at how poorly they take care of their outdoor stock and the prices they typically start out selling at are way out of line, but was mentioned it gets people growing fruit all the better!
I was shocked to see many, many different varieties of fruit trees at my local Home Depot. And they weren’t just labeled “apple” and “peach”, they had the actual names on them. They also had a bunch of apple trees with 3 or 4 varieties on one tree! And the trees were all well sized (small instead of way too back) and for the most part, were pruned well (instead of having 5 tight branches all going straight up).
The number of trees, the number of varieties and quality all have gone way up in the past few years.
The selection up here is mostly garbage. I have noticed that Menards seems to get quite a few different apples in…some sweet cherries/plums…but overall i rarely purchase anything locally.
The K-Mart, of all places, had some interesting varieties of apples here a few years back, they must have got them from a northern nursery because they had Sweet Sixteen, Haralson, and Snowsweet. All of U of Minn. releases.
last year, I could not pass up the $4.99 gooseberry. it did better that the one I bought from Stark’s brothers that I paid over $20 after shipping. I hope it fruits this year.
Tractor Supply was selling 3’ pear trees for $10 this year which seems to be a fair price.
