North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Douglas Woodard <dwoodard@becon.org>]

On 25/05/2011 3:48 PM, sherwin wrote:
> On 5/25/2011 9:50 AM, athagan@atlantic.net wrote:
> > It's the same in Florida.  Wally World, Lowes, Home Depot and many
> > others will happily sell you something that hasn't a hope of ever
> > bearing fruit or even surviving in Florida.  Very nearly bought a
> > couple of Granny Smith apple trees that way some years ago before I
> > learned to research this stuff first.
> >
> > Quoting Jim Fruth<jimfruth@charter.net>:
> >
> > > Douglas Woodward wrote:  "........................If a customer wanted to
> > > buy something, they would sell it. I fear that a lot of businesses still
> > > operate on that principle."
> > >
> > >
> > >       Most of the fruit trees in Wal-Mart's nursery here in Central Minnesota
> > > won't survive here.  When I informed an employee about it he said, "They are
> > > all ordered in Arkansas and we get what Arkansas gets.  If they don't grow,
> > > the customers can get their money back."  What the man failed to say is that
> > > alot of people think they may have caused the death of the fruit tree and
> > > won't ask for a refund.
>           Douglas,
>
>           Another problem not mentioned with big box stores is
> mislabeling of varieties.
>
>           A few years ago I purchased a tree labeled as Belle of Georgia
> Peach.  Expecting a
>           white fleshed peach, it was an orange color of the other kind
> of peaches.  My best
>           guess is that it is a Elberta, since I had grown that before.
>
>           When I checked further with Home Depot, they could not trace
> the source of this
>           tree.  It went through several different places from the
> initial nursery to their store.
>
>           I bought it because it looked healthy, had a visible graft, and
> was a variety I needed
>           to fill in for another peach that had died.  I normally would
> not buy from the big box
>           stores for no other reason than they do not specify what
> rootstock the trees are on.
>           You can find this later problem with several catalog sale
> places like Millers, etc.  They
>           may say semi-dwarf, but there is a lot of latitude in tree
> size, plus if you are looking
>           for something like cold hardiness, you don't know what you are
> getting.
>
>                                             Sherwin Dubren
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