A
few years back, I'd stopped by a huge landscapers' nursery where all the
apple trees were in 5 gallon cans and cost 65$. I was shocked. I'm used
to buying bare root roses for 1$ at 99c store, (the real deal, JACKSON
PERKINS BRAND, online retailing for 16$...the very best hybrid tea roses.)
At that time, bareroot roses were 2$ at Home Depot and everyone was
paying 9$ for bareroot fruit/nut trees and a whole tree in a pot went for
17$ to tops, l9$. But it's doubled since then. Even back then, why
would people actually go to nurseries and pay $65 for a fruit tree???I
asked the clerk, how can you get away with these high prices? He said well
people with resale numbers get 50% knocked off the price. Gardeners, landscapers.
I recalled that my galpal who was doing a front and back garden went to
City Hall, told them she planned to be a landscaper, got a resale number,
free cuz she told the clerk she hadn't had even one client yet.
So then, (this is still back in 2003), I go to HOME DEPOT to get my bags of 88c manure and there's this POMEGRANATE bush (which will become a 15 foot tree in its maturity) At that moment it was as tall as my nose. My daughter LOVES that fruit so I bought a "Wonderful" pomegranate, only $16.95 Found a prime spot in my front yard. Dug a big deep hole, filled it with black compost, HELD the pot tight and yanked out the bush, gave a pomegranate a new home. I had tons of fruit in 2007 and even more growing on it now, 2008. I eat them with sugar on each bite or juice them like oranges, drink it, or boil that juice with sugar into grenadine syrup to store in fridge, slash into water for instant juice. I plant the seeds, give away seedlings. Fun bush!
Same week back in 2003, I saw a tossed-on-the-trash group of oleanders that my neighbor obviously put by the curb, hoping someone would take it from him before it died. They were still potted with STORE POTS, black plastic, and had been with him for a year and hadn't flourished were going out the door being, quite atrophied. I carry the oleander to the back alley inside my NORTHERN fence, (See house online at zillow.com 7900 zelzah, reseda ca 91335..., alongside house, a little shady but who knows? Its width is 5 feet wide tops. I created a long bed there, 50 feet long but only 2 feet wide. Giving walking space on a small allee and anything planted there would be visible from bedroom. Oleanders on north side of house? A Plant that does well in sunny PROVENCE? Well heck, it doesn't produce anything edible, its sap is deadly. The damn plant should be glad that I let it in the door. I let four in as someone had thrown them away in their cans. They were pulled out and planted in the alley. Imagine people buying plants and leaving them in cans. Don't get it. They don't do well then they get dead and folks throw them out.
And same week I saw a lot of DAY LILLIES on the corner at the BLOCKBUSTER
VIDEO store, in its landscaping, that had produced little baby plantlets
up on its branches, which is how they replicate. You can pick your heart
out there. In Winter the branches would droop, the babies would go down
to the ground and root.
But that's not the point of this story.....My point is, for 17$ I got
five bushes/ trees that week and a bushel of daylillies. But my real point
is...that you or anyone can do that EVERY WEEK, 52/365.
Garage sales are also very good sources of plants. When people move, they'll give you anything in the yard, so FEBRUARY when plants are dormant, that's a good time to buy stuff. Every "FOR SALE" sign is a potential STOP by you. When the house goes into garage sale mode, I'll buy that baby apple tree, those roses. Most people don't throw sapling sized trees that are in the ground into a moving truck.
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