Supermarket plants?

Scottish_Mike

We bought some strawberry, sweet red and bell pepper and a tomato plant from Aldi the other day. The tomato looked like it hadn't been watered foor days and we're currently nursing it back to health, and it seems alright; its leaves have recovered and it's still holding onto a few flowers, so hopefully we'll get some tomatoes from it.

The strawberry and peppers both looked alright, but we picked them from further back on the shelves where there was less sun hitting them. The sweet pepper plant already has 4 fruits and more developing, and the other plant has a lot of flowers, so hopefully they'll give us some peppers.

The strawberry has a few flowers, and several runners, which we're trying to get to root.

Overall, the 4 plants came to £13. I'm hopeful they'll give us some fruit; I'll bookmark this thread and report back in a month or so!

peter_the_piper

Do you really mean £13? Seems rather pricy at £3.25 each.

DigForVictory

I got three gooseberry bushes from Aldi, soaked them overnight before planting & kept them watered for a couple of days - they're now fine & grand.

Two blueberry bushes from the poundshop & a loganberry from Wilco's haven't responded to the same treatment yet & 3 months have passed.

If you can't see what you are buying properly (boxed), then shop very carefully.

savemoney

I have had mixed reviews of Aldi plants. I bought loads of fruit bushes earlier this year, Blackberries, Blackcurrants, Goosberries, Raspberries (early and late's) on top of that two apple trees. 2 Blackberries never came, 3 Raspberries (late varieties) never came either. Bought 40 Rose Rugosa from JR Parkers all but one didn't come and 1 out of the 5 mixed clematis died on me

balletshoes

i've not bought from Aldi, but my california lilac was bought from Morrisons 3 years ago as a twig, and within one season is was all over my border and climbing up the wall of my house (thank goodness its a ground-cover version otherwise I dread to think how tall it would be now ).

I am very much a stick-it-in-the-ground-and-hope kind of gardener, all of my perennials are pound shop, Morrisons or Wilko bargain plants. My hostas are all from Wilko, but I don't have any success growing them in borders (the slugs eat them all) so I grow them in big pots instead.

My annuals (which go in lots of pots come this time of year) are all bargain basement ones from B&Q, my local florist, or occasionally Homebase. I never pay more that £1 for a tray of 9 or 12 plug plants (from B&Q I haven't paid more than 20p for a tray this year). They were all planted out in May (through the month) and they are all in full bloom now, I would say I have lost less than 10% of the total plants I have bargain-basemented this year - all they need is more water and sunshine than they get in B&Q really.

If you want some good colourful ground cover this year, I'd say try bacopa - I have some in pots for the first time this year, they grow and spread copiously, and they are really pretty too (they were some of my B&Q bargains).

Scottish_Mike

peter_the_piper wrote: »

Do you really mean £13? Seems rather pricy at £3.25 each.

Sadly so. All the fruiting plants were around the £3 mark at our Aldi. Had another look at the bell pepper and while there's flowers, none of the fruits seem to be setting, so going to give them some extra feed.

I got a couple of reduced Bay Trees from Wilkos for £2 each, which were both in a sorry state. I've repotted them now and pinched off all the dying bits and they seem happy.

So far my biggest disaster has been raspberry canes. Got 2 tubs each with 3 canes from Wilkos for £5 each back in March. 2 of them each have 1 stalk that is producing (small amounts of) fruit, a third has a few flowers starting to blossom. Nothing has come from the remaining 3 canes - they just sit there like little twigs, poking out of the ground, with absolutely no growth. I pulled one of the canes out the other day and chucked it. I think I left it too late, and by the time I bought the canes they had been there for a while, or maybe I didn't feed them enough at the start, but it's annoying only a few seem to be alive. Will make the effort to go to a proper garden centre for raspberry canes in the future.

Scottish_Mike

I just remembered this thread so thought I'd post about my results of the Aldi plants.

Strawberry plant: failed, but possibly due to a bit of neglect on our part. When it was really hot in summer I'm not sure we watered it enough and it died. We never had a decent place to plant it, and it also had problems with slugs. Will try strawberries again, but at the allotment.

Yellow bell pepper: we got 5 yellow peppers, all of which were very sweet. Will grow peppers again, but probably from seed, and definitely in a greenhouse.

Red sweet pepper: we must have got about 15 - 20 little peppers off that plant. not very big, but tasty enough. Again, will probably grow from seed next time.

Hanging basket tumbler tomato: REALLY good yield from this. Took a while to fruit and ages for them to ripen, but once they were ripe they were really sweet. We found if we didn't wait until they were totally ripe the skins were a little tough. Most ripened at the same time, so we had about 1.5kg that got made into soup. Will probably try to get a few of these again next year, but will try growing some cordons in the greenhouse. (When I finally get a greenhouse!)

So overall I found it worthwhile to an extent getting the Aldi veg. The tomatoes I'll definitely buy again, but everything else I'm going to do from seed next year.

pambler

Thanks for the update. My Aldi Tomato's and Chillis have been brilliant and have had loads of both of them. The caulis were a bit of a disaster, but people have told me that they can be a bit of a challenge, so not blaming Aldi!

What have been really amazing are my basket and planter plants from Aldi. I planted them up about April time and kept them in my conservatory for a while, then put them out mid May. They have flowered and flowered until about 2 weeks ago. All my neighbours have commented on them.

My perennials (mainly Aldi and Morrisons) have also taken and done pretty well. In fact my garden is now looking great. However my landlord has now decided he wants to sell the house:(

wellused

People often have plants which need dividing maybe you could chat to neighbours and mention it or put an add on a recycle website, I have bought small plants before and within the shake of a lambs tail they are full sized. Walking around the garden centre and looking at the prices of the bigger plants I often think we have one of those twice as big and when we bought it it was half the size and half the price, if you're not bothered about waiting a couple of years for the finished article then buy small plants and look after them they will soon grow.