When to hit the poundshops/Aldi/Lidl?

[KarlB924]

Hey guys, so I'm looking to bulk up the number of fruit bushes at my allotment, as I'm keeping some of my best (read: expensive) bushes in the garden at home, and also I've been asked to get some gooseberries etc in.

Does anyone know roughly when they start bringing them into the store?

I want to get them asap so they're still in good condition, but my local lidl and aldi are really quite out of my way, it's a proper trek to visit them and pretty pointless if I come back empty handed!

[alldigging]

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[veggiechicken]

Take cuttings from your best plants Each time you prune them, put the prunings into a slit trench and wait for them to root. By the following year, you'll have a plant of similar size to one you'd buy in a cheap shop

[zazen999]

Aye, get one good gooseberry from a decent supplier, and you can propagate from that.

[KarlB924]

I've already got half a garden full of goji/blackcurrant cuttings A couple of my bushes are pound shop specials, and apart from a 'redcurrant' being a blackcurrant, they're actually pretty good plants.

I'd long to buy the expensive plants and take cuttings off them next year, but I don't really want to leave massive gaps for half a year while the plants establish (I'm basically starting off a fruit hedge down one side of the lottie). Plus I've just about spent all my money on equipment and the greenhouse we're buying at home

[veggiechicken]

Scrounge cuttings from other plot holders and plant them up thickly. You can always thin them out afterwards. If you put them in now they'll be leafing up in spring anyway.

[FB.]

Cheap fruit plants are usually clearance so are likely to be offered later in winter. Sometimes they are offloaded cheaply because they are from a batch where some were mislabelled and therefore may get complaints when a full-price-paying customer finds that their pear tree actually produces crab apples!

[zazen999]

Absolutely, but if you don't care what they are, just ask everyone to bung you their trimmings/diggings out from all their fruit bushes/rasps/trees/suckers and stick them in a row...to get enough for a fruit hedge it's going to cost you quite a bit anyhow.

[BUFFS]

lovely gooseberries, a couple of "sticks" from a pound shop, all prunings pushed into the back of the greenhouse border in late summer, lifted in the spring before planting the toms and melons and put out into the garden, they have to be the easiest fruit to propagate from, we now have 9 bushes and have given away as many again, we just love that taste..