There seems to be a nicer selection of fruit trees available this year than I've noticed in years past.
A couple of weeks ago, Costco in Vancouver, WA, carried a wide variety of bareroot fruit trees. There were apples, Japanese and European plums, Asian and European pears, cherries, with both singles and multi-grafts in ample supply. They mostly seemed to be the more familiar ones such as Honeycrisp apples and Shiro Japanese plum, but there were many varieties available. The price was also great - $20 for single-grafted trees and $30 for the multi-grafts.
Shovel and Thumb is a nursery in Ridgefield, WA, located very close to Clark County Fairgrounds and Vancouver. They're carrying very nice potted fruit trees, including multi-grafted (3 and 4 varieties) and espaliered (these were lovely). There were the more common varieties as well as quite a few unusual ones, which is a nice change. Cosmic Crisp was one of the multi-grafts available, the first time that I've seen them offered that way.
GH,
My wife was at a Costco about 4 or 5 weeks ago to do some grocery shopping and came home with a bagged semi-dwarf 'Red Haven' peach. She said that they had only arrived that day. She's a native southern Californian; she couldn't resist and bought it on a whim. I grinned and accepted it. A week or two later, I was sitting under one of our two redwoods, and across the yard I saw her pull the roots up out of the bag to plant it into a 5-gallon pot. She held it up for me to see. The root system looked like a porcupine that had been given a military "buzz cut".
...Well, we got a sunny, warmish streak for a few days and the latent buds were looking good. Then it was back to cool temps and cold rain. Looking at it today, I'm not sure that those buds are still alive. I sure hope that they are, but here in Cascadia there are just so many diseases that take down such trees.... Vain hopes on her part, I think.
I hope that you bought things that might actually thrive in our area. As I've no doubt mentioned elsewhere, the PNW has been the trickiest place to grow things of the numerous places I've lived and gardened in this life. I still miss the mangoes, tangerines, cherimoyas, chocolate persimmons, jaboticabas, etc. of my early childhood in South America. Cain't grow 'em here! ...And I think wistfully about the things that could be grown in southern California. ...And the apples and cherries, and berries of the midwest....
Whatever you may have purchased, GH, all best wishes for success!
Reinettes.
It's a bit later now, and my wife was looking at her dear, dormant, peach that she bought and very conscientiously planted. It doesn't look to either of us that it's alive or will do anything that would suggest a productive living organism. I inquired of her whether she could get a refund and she said that she had kept the receipt. We'll give it another month, but I expect her to get her money back.
Reinettes.
Idyllwild
simplepress
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
John S
1 Guest(s)