Roots are the main thing when planting trees/bushes

[nickdub]

I had to kill some time in Hereford yesterday and went in to B&Q. They had some good looking fruit trees, so naturally I thought it would be rude not to buy one, picked a Herman plum one as being new to me - £6.

Anyway having planted it this afternoon it looked like a well grown tree about 6' high and extremely well wrapped root ball with about 3m of black cling film round it. Just one warning though, the ball of compost round the roots looked good, but I decided to untangle it and found a lot of the finer roots had been doubled over in the process of packing. I daresay it would grow anyway but I spent some time teasing all these roots straight and then tamping earth around them, finally gave the soil a good watering (anyone watching would reckon I'm mental watering a leafless tree :-)

BTW there were also some standard fruit bushes (redcurrant and gooseberry I think) with good long stems on offer for about £5 which you don't often see, as well as the usual stool grown soft fruit bushes for £3 each.

[It never rains..it pours]

Brought a Herman from them in the spring on similar wrapped roots deal. It has grown well so seems they are ok deal, presuming its what they claim it is. Hopefully they expand this to Rita walnut trees

[nickdub]

All the trees and the soft fruit looked to be very well grown examples - I've bought more expensive stuff from nurseries in the past, and the quality looked comparable to me. Of course the range of choice was limited, but they had sour cherries for example and only the likelihood that my wife would kill me if I bought two trees, stopped me getting one of those too. :-)