Shops - when do they start gardening goods?

Was just wondering when the shops, supermarkets will start selling seeding trays and small fruit trees etc pleaSe?

 

Possibly by the end of March

 

Wilkos now have most of their gardening stuff in (including rather expensive bare rooted trees)

Lidl & Aldi normally have the best priced fruit trees.

 

For fruit trees, I've discovered its often better to find a local independent nursery. There are a few near me where you can buy apple trees (for example) well establish and already bearing fruit, for about £15.

The supermarkets often sell them for a fiver, but they are much less mature and sometimes dead.

 

Aldi and Lidl sell them January/February time and are very much alive (albeit bare rooted, which can confuse a novice) and very cheap in comparison to garden centers (but not in comparison to specialist places).
The most likely cause of "death" is that of the purchaser and lack of knowledge, or ( most likely) lack of watering throughout the forthcoming 12 months after planting (I know this from experience )

 

IMHO spend the money on the right Apple tree. Apple trees yield £N00, if not £N,000, in their lifetime, so spending £15 on a plant, rather than a fiver, won't make a lot of difference. From a nursery you will get:

• the right rootstock - so the plant is the right size, whether for a pot, a cordon, or a socking great big tree.
• a variety that you like to eat - you are going to wait a few years for a decent crop of fruit, don't buy a variety unless you know you like to eat it, and it will grow well in your area. If you aren't sure, and can wait, go to an Apple Day near you in the Autumn (Search Google for "Apple Day", there is one every year )
• You could also get a Family Tree - multiple varieties grafted onto a single tree, so you would have a variety of flavours from the one tree

 

I think it's good to buy cheap Aldi/Lidl plants as soon as they come in. I feel very sorry for the poor dessicated things you see later on, having been sat in hot shop for months.

I agree with Kristen about the wisdom of making an informed choice.

Are you champing at the bit, @Derbyshire? I wouldn't recommend buying seedling trays until early April even if they are available. Most of those tray plants are tender and may have been sitting in draughts getting chilled. Also you cannot plant them out safely until the end of May (later oop North) so you will have to provide appropriate care and shelter until then. They will just sit around getting pot bound unless you pot them on so you may as well buy as late as you can just before planting time.

 

I am keeping an eye out for bare root trees in Aldi. I've seen the Wilkinson ones last week and they looked in pretty good shape for £5. Just to pot them up and feed them up well and they will be grateful.

If anyone sees them in Aldi or Lidl before me - please kindly update this thread.

 

Like I said: Don't buy a variety unless you know it is one you like to eat, will do well in your soil / location, and is on the right root stock - otherwise you will be wasting your Fiver and the several years it will take to start fruiting and for you to decide its the wrong flavour, soil or plant size!!

 

Usually far too early!

 

I am too keen so feels too late for me

 

Soft fruit bare root plants already on sale in Aldi for £2-49 each.

Fruit trees on sale from tomorrow.

 

Can I urge people who are planning to buy a fruit tree to consider that it:

• Is a variety you like to eat
• Is on a suitable rootstock for how you want to grow it - either a dwarfing rootstock if you want to grow it in a container, or something more vigorous if you will grow it on a wall / Espallier, up to a rootstock suitable to produce a tree - if that is what you want.
• Will grow in your soil / area.
• Either doesn't need a pollination-partner (i.e. because it is self-fertile, or you have something else suitable nearby) or you also buy a pollination partner for it (a fruit varieties that is not truly self-fertile falls into a pollination "group", and it will pollinate with a tree from a group either side - so if the tree is Group B it will pollinate with Groups A, B or C. Note that some Apples need pollinating BY something else but also will NOT themselves pollinate anything else - in that case you need 3 varieties, the one that won't help others, and two others which will sort themselves out, as well as the meany one!)
• Beware of labelling saying "Self fertile". A lot of fruit trees are partially self fertile. For those you will get a much better crop if you also have a suitable pollination partner; otherwise you may either get light crops (which may be fine) or crops only on alternate years

If the special offer fruit trees don't satisfy those criteria then, IMHO, you are better off saving your 4-quid, and a year or two until it fruits enough for you to discover you don't like the flavour, or it pegs it because it doesn't like your soil, and spend the £15 on a tree from a local specialist nursery who can make sure that you get something suitable.

An apple tree, in a couple of years time, will be producing £10 a year of fruit (at supermarket prices) and it will do that for a couple of decades, or so, thus dirt-cheap but unsuitable is a false economy - and will waste a couple of growing years or growing-time reaching that conclusion.