"Where can I buy the best fruit trees or berry bushes?" is a ques­tion often asked by novice fruit gar­den­ers. Find­ing the best suited plants for your gar­den con­di­tions is an extremely impor­tant foun­da­tion for a suc­cess­ful fruit gar­den but it isn't really as hard as most peo­ple think.
Where could gar­den­ers begin their search? The pos­si­bil­i­ties include home and gar­den mass mer­chan­dis­ers, local nurs­eries, and mail order cat­a­logs. Each offers slightly dif­fer­ent advan­tages. Start with the one that meets your main priorities.
If low price is your pri­mary objec­tive, you'll prob­a­bly find the most com­pet­i­tive pric­ing at large mass mer­chan­dis­ers and home cen­ters. Unfor­tu­nately, because plants are acquired through the fran­chise chan­nels, the selec­tion of vari­eties will usu­ally be very lim­ited and may not even be well suited to your grow­ing region. Use this option if all you really want is a very basic, inex­pen­sive intro­duc­tion to fruit gardening.
A local nurs­ery or spe­cial­ized gar­den cen­ter may serve you bet­ter. Depend­ing on the manager's fruit grow­ing knowl­edge, some local nurs­eries offer a gen­er­ous assort­ment of fruit trees and bushes. Oth­ers may be as lim­ited as the mass mer­chan­diser. At a local nurs­ery where the staff is well trained and inter­ested in hor­ti­cul­ture, the plants you find will likely be of high qual­ity and more apt to grow well. One great advan­tage the local nurs­ery­man can offer is famil­iar­ity with the local grow­ing con­di­tions. This can be very help­ful to the novice gar­dener try­ing to select suit­able fruit trees and bushes for long-term success.
those that spe­cial­ize exclu­sively in fruit trees and berry plants.
The gen­eral gar­den cat­a­log typ­i­cally car­ries a med­ley of dif­fer­ent fruit plants. Most of the actual fruit vari­eties fall into the "tried and true," long-time stan­dards. Some­times the cat­a­logs also carry a pack­age assort­ment that may include an apple tree or two, a peach, a plum, and sev­eral berry bushes. If the pack­age is well put together, this can be a sim­ple way for the novice to start. Be sure, though, that all of the vari­eties included are indeed well-suited for your grow­ing area.
If you've pre­pared your­self by read­ing up on fruit grow­ing or you are an expe­ri­enced gar­dener look­ing for a vari­ety that is a bit out of the ordi­nary, the spe­cial­ized fruit nurs­ery cat­a­logs will, with­out ques­tion, offer the great­est selec­tion of fruit vari­eties. Many will focus on just berry plants or just fruit trees. Some cat­a­logs may go so far as to spe­cial­ize in one type of fruit such as apples or grapes . Every­thing from the lat­est dis­ease resis­tant straw­berry vari­ety to the antique apple you remem­ber from grandpa's farm can be found in the spe­cialty cat­a­logs. Fre­quently, these cat­a­logs also include infor­ma­tion rang­ing from plant spac­ings to ripen­ing dates. Their staff can answer other ques­tions you may have.
Whether you are look­ing for low cost, advice on locally adapted fruit vari­eties, or the old­est or newest in vari­ety selec­tions, you'll suc­ceed when you direct your plant hunt toward the source most suited to your needs.
This article was posted in Fruit Gardening 101, Resources and tagged buying berry bushes, buying fruit trees, garden centers, nursery catalogs. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments with the RSS feed for this post.Post a Comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.