Garden centre plants are rubbish

[Leif]

This year in my new greenhouse I planted three Sungold tomatoes, two Jalapeno chiilis, one orange habanero, one trinidad scorpion and one scotch bonnet from several garden centres. And some Capsicum baccatum I grew from seed.

Sungold: nice but I’m not sure they’re Sungold.
Trinidad scorpion: no chillis.
Orange habanero: no chillis.
Jalapeno: large green chillis, no taste, no heat, one is now turning red AFTER the scotch bonnets.
Scotch bonnet: excellent, fantastic flavour, decent crop, most have ripened.
C. baccatum: good harvest, pleasant taste, mild.

I’m not buying garden centres plants again ! I’ve had issues with herbs too e.g. prostrate rosemary growing 3 feet tall.

 

[Anniekay]

When you grow your own plants from seed they mature in your soil, your growing conditions. When you buy plants at garden centers they are grown in greenhouses and are used to, from "birth" if you will, the conditions at the growers, not at your place. They now have to adjust themselves to your growing conditions and if you don't give them exactly what they want exactly when they need it, they may sulk.

That said, sometimes it's you, sometimes it's the plants you bought, and sometimes it's just the climatic conditions that year didn't suit the plants. You've heard it said that "this year such -and-such didn't do well but last year did fantastic."

I wouldn't rush to judgement over one year's experience. I've had crop failures with seeds that always, before that, were reliable so got plants at the garden center. Other than getting a hot pepper that was set back into the wrong place by a customer when I chose from a green pepper plant tray, all flourished. It's a craps-shoot, gardening; ya win some, ya lose some. That's life in a nutshell.

 

[Charlie 001]

Ok. So we gotta remember summer was rubbish. Hardly any decent length of sunshine so it not surprising the chillies didn’t do well. Also going from nursery to garden centre to your garden would have given the chillies a bit of a shock. So lots of reasons why the plants didn’t do well likewise with the tomatoes, You can get quite a bit of variation with just growing conditions
prostrate rosemary can grow 3ft high- seen it before- nutrient rich soil and plenty of moisture can encourage some bonkers growth

 

[blenor]

Tomatoes are pretty straightforward to grow from seed - on a sunny window sill in a propagator. We end up with far too many and different varieties. I can't see much reason to buy one or two small plants at a garden centre. They are probably grown en masse in another country even. Just have to remember to start them off at the right time of year.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Even if you buy seed they are so much cheaper than plants, save seed and they are free. You have to check they are not f1 plants if you want to save, you can get some strange results then, but even so some will probably come true like the parents. If you are taking side shoots from tomatoes put them in water and they will probably grow roots, with cuttings you know the genetics are constant, but of course some bought tomatoes may be grafted.
The mistake I most commonly see is people trying to save every seedling, grow four times as many as you need and then whittle them down to just the very best, strongest plants. Garden centres won't do that of course, they want to sell every one they can. Giving away the extras makes you popular, our village has a facebook page for just that.

 

[mr bartley green]

This year in my new greenhouse I planted three Sungold tomatoes, two Jalapeno chiilis, one orange habanero, one trinidad scorpion and one scotch bonnet from several garden centres. And some Capsicum baccatum I grew from seed.

Sungold: nice but I’m not sure they’re Sungold.
Trinidad scorpion: no chillis.
Orange habanero: no chillis.
Jalapeno: large green chillis, no taste, no heat, one is now turning red AFTER the scotch bonnets.
Scotch bonnet: excellent, fantastic flavour, decent crop, most have ripened.
C. baccatum: good harvest, pleasant taste, mild.

I’m not buying garden centres plants again ! I’ve had issues with herbs too e.g. prostrate rosemary growing 3 feet tall.

This year in my new greenhouse I planted three Sungold tomatoes, two Jalapeno chiilis, one orange habanero, one trinidad scorpion and one scotch bonnet from several garden centres. And some Capsicum baccatum I grew from seed.

Sungold: nice but I’m not sure they’re Sungold.
Trinidad scorpion: no chillis.
Orange habanero: no chillis.
Jalapeno: large green chillis, no taste, no heat, one is now turning red AFTER the scotch bonnets.
Scotch bonnet: excellent, fantastic flavour, decent crop, most have ripened.
C. baccatum: good harvest, pleasant taste, mild.

I’m not buying garden centres plants again ! I’ve had issues with herbs too e.g. prostrate rosemary growing 3 feet tall.

 

[mr bartley green]

I'm in UK and we have some great garden centres
The large stores of B and M are great for for plants in the stores that have garden centres in

 

[Leif]

I’m not convinced. My additional past experience of garden centres:

White hyssop, produced blue flowers.

An Isfahan Quince tree, on a dwarfing stock grew to the height of an ungrafted tree i.e. very tall. Fruit described as delicious and suitable for southern England, turned out to be sparse and not worth eating. A Russian quince nearby is prolific with edible fruit.

Polska raspbery canes produced sparse, tiny fruit, half of which were disgusting i.e. very unpleasant, over several years. Removed, and replaced with more Polska from another nursery, and these are as described i..e good size, quantity and taste. Both treated the same way i.e. lots of well rotted manure.

Generally I’ve found bought shrubs to be fine, Hebes, Choisya and so on are all as expected.

My neighbour planted a dwarf Acer, only grows to a few meters tall, said the label. Each year they cut it back to shoulder height, and it grew another three of four meters.

I’ve been growing chillis for 20 years, but decided to use a garden centre this year due to putting up a new greenhouse. Yes chillis can vary a bit in heat, stress them and they get hotter. One plant, from a local market stall, was excellent. The ones from big garden centres were pants. I’ve dug out the Scotch Bonnet to overwinter indoors as the pods are lovely, very tasty, and otherwise I will do what I normally do which is to buy seeds and grow my own chillis and tomatoes.

 

[yardiron]

The biggest problem I've had in the past with garden center plants has been diseased plants. I gave up on tomato plants from the local two or three stores because everything they sold developed some sort of bacterial blotching as soon as the fruit ripened. It wasn't just me, many I spoke to had the same issues.
I started buying my supplies out of state and ordering my seeds online.
I bleach wash and dry all of my trays every year and mix my own starter mix most years.

I've had years when Jalepeno peppers had almost no heat, but those seeds I saved from those peppers produced perfectly hot peppers the following season.
I sort of figured it was a combination of soil, fertilizer, and sun exposure that determined the heat. It seems that the drier and hotter the summer the hotter the peppers get.

This year, peppers didn't do well for me at all, the few I planted didn't survive and the seedlings looked lame from the start but they were a brand I never grew before and the first year where I hadn't over-wintered my existing plants in about 5 years. Although jalapeno peppers are a popular farm crop here I've never had great success in my ground with them but every so often I get a few plants that do well and when I do I keep them through a few years by re-potting them and moving them inside for the winter.

One neighbor who normally does mostly peppers told me that he had near total crop failure this year in peppers and tomatoes, something he' not had in decades.

Nothing seemed to grow right this summer except for my figs,
I got more figs this year than I ever did before in the past.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Nothing seemed to grow right this summer except for my figs,
I got more figs this year than I ever did before in the past.

The fig tree in one corner of our greenhouse produced masses of them this year, I put it down to taking out the useless grape vine that I reckon had been competing with it. It has developed a huge root system near the surface, it's a 14 ft greenhouse and anywhere I hoe I find roots just below the surface, everything else in there is in pots or containers.

 

[Sean Regan]

We occasionally patronise "Bents" off the East Lancs Road, it's about 20 minutes away from us. It's the largest garden centre in Europe and they also have an excellent restaurant.

Bents Garden & Home | Garden Furniture, Plants & Homewares

Bents Garden & Home. A family business established in 1937, still 'growing our own' just as our grandparents did. Garden Furniture, Plants, BBQs, Cookshop and information about our Warrington Garden Centre.

www.bents.co.uk

Their plants aren't cheap, but they are of good quality and are covered by a guarantee.

We've bought many plants from them and have never been disappointed, including this Sorbus thirty years ago. It has delicate small white blossom in the Spring.

and an abundance of red berries in the autumn that remain long after the leaves have fallen.

and this Lilac two years ago. This year was the first time it flowered. It will stay in its big pot for now.

 

[yardiron]

Even if you buy seed they are so much cheaper than plants, save seed and they are free. You have to check they are not f1 plants if you want to save, you can get some strange results then, but even so some will probably come true like the parents. If you are taking side shoots from tomatoes put them in water and they will probably grow roots, with cuttings you know the genetics are constant, but of course some bought tomatoes may be grafted.
The mistake I most commonly see is people trying to save every seedling, grow four times as many as you need and then whittle them down to just the very best, strongest plants. Garden centres won't do that of course, they want to sell every one they can. Giving away the extras makes you popular, our village has a facebook page for just that.

My fig tree started out as a cutting taken off a tree in Egypt. a relative went there on leave in the navy about 60 years ago and a cutting was taken from a tree there, placed inside a book that had a few pages cut away inside. The book was soaked, wrapped up and sent home from aboard ship. That plant was planted in a tub in his mother's back yard where it took off and further cuttings were taken from that one and given to various family members.
The cutting I got here was already rooted when it was brought here, it took off pretty fast here but stayed within roughly a five foot circle or so, being cut back several times as well. It tends to try to grow to the east, putting down creeping roots and new shoots in that direction all the time. Its more a cluster of stems each year then a tree, it grows more like bamboo than a regular tree. This year was the first year where it got too tall to reach the top without a ladder, and it got to be over twelve feet wide.
It did something it never did before, it put on an early bloom of figs in late May, those turned and looked ripe despite being rock hard in a few weeks, I thought the hot/cold/hot cycles had screwed up its normal pattern but it dropped the first bloom and put on new growth and a new batch of figs that ripened in record speed before the end of August.

The normal pattern has always been that it runs a 5 year cycle, with the fifth year usually turning cold before the figs matured. The the next year it would start early giving me figs in July. Its never put on two blooms of figs like that before.

Once the figs were done around the end of August or so, the leaves started to turn dark and drop as it normally would do when the weather cooled off in October or so. Its been in its winter/dormant state now since the first week of September. It dropped its leaves, and the branches have died back as if it was the dead of winter.

Year to year its always died back to the ground unless I bury it in leaves and wrap it up. If I do all that it'll revive about half of its stems for the following year but lately our winters haven't been all that severe so I don't think its died back as far as usual through the winter.

I want to take some cuttings from it this spring to make a few more plants, I want one up closer to the house and figure its good insurance if something happens to the main tree.
I didn't put much value in it until this year, the figs were unusually sweet for some reason and I was able to pick more than I could eat every day it was in bloom.
I had so many I had to figure out how to preserve them and ended up with about 100 jars or so of fig preserves that I canned and refrigerated. I had to do something as I couldn't see them going to waste on the bush and I could only eat so many. All the neighbors here have had cuttings from this bush but I don't know how many survived over the years and I'm sure many got lost to landscaping changes by new owners. As it stands now I'm the oldest resident here being here most of my life, the none of the original owners who had planted clippings from this tree are still here. They were mostly my grandparents age and those folks passed on in the 70's and many houses have been through a half dozen owners since then.

With the pattern broken now, I'm not sure what to expect for next year. Its never gone into dormancy this early before, its also never dropped all its leaves right after a bloom either but the weather turned pretty quick there for a bit in August going from 90°+ to highs in the 60's and a few nights down to 45°.