How much money do they want?
 

Okay, how much would YOU pay? We stopped today at the local Publix Grocery Store to check on their specials. Stacked around one of the columns out front were some 30" tall tomato plants in 2-3 gallon black nursery pots. Naturally, my curiosity had to look.

They were listed on their tags as "Better Bush". Most had several smallish 1-2" tomatoes already set. The plants were stocky and almost looked "Rugose" in their stockiness. I looked for a price tag and didn't see one right away. Then, shoved down in between a couple of the pots was the magical piece of cardstock. They wanted $12.98 each for the plants. Another local grocer last year had similar plants for $2.50 each, and they had 12 varieties to choose from.

A bit later, the garden department manager at the Oakwood, GA Walmart told me he was ordering additional tomato and pepper plants every two days and his delivery time was 48 hours from the time of the order. He also said that this was a most unusual year for his vegetable plants. One of his workers made the comment that the plants are "flying off the shelf as quick as we can put them on the shelf."

My wife was a bit irked when two ladies trying to buy some pepper and tomato plants began asking me questions about how to grow tomatoes on patios. I did my best to please both my wife and the curious questioners. But, as you all know, there was no way for me to win this one.

Anyhow, this has sparked my curiosity about how much plants are costing in YOUR neck of the woods.

Ted

Standard Bonnie's 12 OZ cup plants were $3.50 here a month or two back. A friend of mine in College Station reported the same prices there after weather killed the first two batches of plants I gave him. He ended up buying a couple of six packs of small plants for $3 at his Co-Op store. I figure the drive cost him another $2 in fuel. The lowest price I've seen in Houston was 95 cent for single pitiful dying plants at a grocery store. They had plenty of those dying plants too. :surprised:

Ken

This year all my plants came from seeds sent to me from friends like you Ted. :yes:

I have not priced tomato plants this year but my daughter told me to send her some info at work plus a few pics of the tomato plants and she'd post them on the bulletin board. I hemmed and hawed around trying to decide what to ask and finally about 3 p.m. I sent the email. Within half an hour, I had an order. I asked 3.00 each or 4/10.00. The guy bought 4 and that was at the end of the day. My daughter said several of the people had already left for the weekend. So who knows, maybe I'll sell a few more next week?! :)

we went to a garden center near Tri-County mall in Cincinnati, and they wanted $4.50 or 2 for 7 (as my DF recalls), and then we went to Jungle Jims (awesome international market/grocery complex) and they had 4-cells for $1.95 tomatoes and peppers! (and a few double cells, we got about 6 plants for that!)

Ive paid $2-3 for quart size plants (about 6 true leaves) for heirlooms at a local place, but theyre liquidating
this year....

I've visited 2 garden centers this season. At one, their 4" pots were $3.99. At the other, they had only cell packs, which were $6. They said they're potting up next week (I assume to 4") and that they will then be $6/each.

i haven't bought plants in a long time maybe 18 years. i prolly wouldn't spend more than 2 or 3 bucks for a single plant. sure wouldn't spend 12 for a big plant. i was raised thrifty. not gonna do it. i'd be going for a 6 pack or 4 pack for $1.95 or whatever the price may be.


keith

Robin303, thank you for your kind words. I, too, have bought no plants this year. I'll send you some pictures of my wonderful pepper plants that have come from seeds from your garden.

Ted

My experience has been if you buy a 4-pack for 1.29, or about 35 cents per plant, you can pot them up to 4" square pots, hold them 2 weeks and have a better plant than Bonnie sells at Walmart or Home Depot for 3.99 - or ten times your investment.

I would have to say that this is so true Travis, except for strawberries, I have not been able to find a good price on them so I went ahead and bought 3 bonnie plants from the dreaded HD.
But I would not buy anything else from them. I also scooped up some plants at the local swap meet for 3 for $4. So you can always try places like that.
Sammie

About 3 weeks ago I saw some 2-3 ft tomato plants at Costco, they wanted 11 or 12 dollars for them, no way I was going to pay that for root bound plants (they already had blooms on them too) but people were buying them up.

Looked at several plant places today - the local mom and pop wonderful places - .79 for a maybe 3" x 3" pot and .99 at the other place - mostly hybrids, very limited heirloom selection. Piegirl

Wow, I could have made a mint this year.

I picked up a couple 18'' Talledega Plants from Bonnie that were $3.50 each. But they had the larger plants for 12.50 too, I think they were all cherry though. Only heirloom was Mr. Stripey. :(

I'm in Los Angeles county, in the San Fernando Valley.

Laurel sells plants for $5-8 each, and sold more of her available stock in one day than she thought she would in 3 weeks at those prices. She has 4" pots. She has weekly plant sales along with her web sales, and she had to shut down for 2 weeks, her first day was that busy!

I sold a jaune flamme today at my yard sale for $5, also in a 4" pot.

The Hollywood farmer's market has a guy selling seedlings for $1 - $2.

The WalMart near me doesn't seem to have a problem stocking the plants, but maybe they're just quick. Standard wallyworld prices. (still trying to wash the wally-ick off. They sucked me in to look at cheap tomato cages)

The nursery 2 blocks from me sells a decent variety, some basic heirlooms and hybrids. They're a pretty good indie. I'd say I see about 30 or so varieties. The vast majority of their large vegetable and herb area is tomatoes. They sell 4" pots for $1.29, small 6-packs for $1.49. I bought a Cherokee Purple from them 2 days ago at that price. :) They are very likely conventionally raised, though. They get you on the tomato cages and fertilizer, also!

I saw a local feed/garden store selling 15 - 20-30" tall tomato plants in 3 gallon black nursery pots for $11.50 just last week! Good Heirlooms too, but they had tomatoes on them, ripening; and you could tell that they were stunted from being forced to stay in those smallish pots.

~* Robin

The dreaded wallyworld, (imho) had some varieties, Better Boy and Bradley, for $3 for a 9 pac. Those I bought.
$3.49 for Bonnies, hybrid stuff, 1 seedling. Not.

Calloways had 4 inch pot heirlooms for $1.99. (A good deal, one tomato pays for the plant, at Farmer's Market prices.) A 5 or 7 gallon pot of one tomato plant was $25 (that is scary, imho.)
I am giving away a bunch of what I raised from seed because I think even $3.49 for a Celebrity at Home Depot or Lowe's is usury.

[quote=gallaure

The WalMart near me doesn't seem to have a problem stocking the plants, but maybe they're just quick. Standard wallyworld prices. (still trying to wash the wally-ick off. They sucked me in to look at cheap tomato cages)





Tomato cages at walmart didnt look to bad - the 50+ inchers were 2.43 a piece. I wanna say 56, but it may have been 54....

3 legged, galvanized and seemed decent in terms of thickness...

Jackster

[QUOTE=Jackster;128748][quote=gallaure

The WalMart near me doesn't seem to have a problem stocking the plants, but maybe they're just quick. Standard wallyworld prices. (still trying to wash the wally-ick off. They sucked me in to look at cheap tomato cages)





Tomato cages at walmart didnt look to bad - the 50+ inchers were 2.43 a piece. I wanna say 56, but it may have been 54....

3 legged, galvanized and seemed decent in terms of thickness...

Jackster[/QUOTE]

You're right, the price was good. However, I'd need about 50 of them, and me BROKE!!! They were 54", btw. Good quality, and made in the USA. Other ones at twice the price @ Home Depot were from China.

I'm going to borrow some loppers and find a stand of bamboo. I've come up with a leaning trellis method which may take me a couple hours, but will only cost me $2. Total. I can afford that!

Last year, a fair portion of my tomato problems were due to lack of preparedness due to financial mishap. I'm going to fix that this year, if I can.

I stopped at our local Lowe's today. They had Better Boy tomatoes in 3 gallon pots. They were big and NICE. The price was 22.00. I don't think so :shock:
4 inch Bonnie tomatoes were in the 3.95 price range, and then going up to 9.95 for larger sizes of Mr. Stripey. So glad I don't have to rely on those places for my maters.

I'm 20 miles north of Pgh, Pa. Ma & Pa same as last year $1.69 for four pack hybred and $1.50 ea for hairlooms in 4" pots.
Ed

I feel bad saying that I have been getting $2.00 or 3 for $5 for my plants in 2401 packs (24 plants in a standard flat, aprox 2.5 x 3). The plants I have in gallon nursery pots sell for $5 or 6 and if I have any potted up in 3 gal pots I get $12-15 for them. I also do some 10" hanging baskets for $10.

I've been getting those prices for several years already with no problem. I have plenty of customers that claim my plants are the best they have ever bought so keep coming back year after year. Actually this year I will be a bit less than last year when the price of diesel was more that twice what it is now.

Where I sell I have plenty of competition too with prices higher and lower than me.

Carol

Why feel bad? If you can get the price, then you should! I would pay more at a mom and pop place than I would at the box store. I always try to support the small places anytime I can. The plants I was looking at yesterday were so dried out and stressed. It's been majorly windy the past few days and I know I have been watering my maters 3x a day. When you invest your time and money into something like this, you want them to look good. Obviously the place I was shopping was not as concerned about dried out plants.

Just came back from a trip to Lowes and Wally World. The 54" cages at Walmart are not made from as heavy gage wire as the ones at Lowes where the price is 4.58 per. The Lowes cages appear to have twice as thick wire. There is also a major difference in the welds on the Walmart vs. Lowes. The Walmart cages were galvanized and then welded. The Lowes cages were galvanized AFTER welding.

So, I guess we get what we pay for.

Yes, I'm cheap. I got 10 from Wally World.

Cheaply speaking, Ted

A locally owned garden centere here in West Monroe has several heirloom varieties in 3" pots for $3.98 if I remember correctly. We went ahead and bought three Black Krims that are already sizeable just to see if they would produce any faster than our plants we started from seeds. I thought that was a fairly reasonable price for heirlooms.

Thanks for the comparison shopping Ted!

I was wondering about that very same thing. I need a couple of small cages for some small tomato plants and vines I'm growing.

~* Robin

the smaller wal-mart cages were like 1.65 ish or so. 42" or so?

I bought big ones because I have a lot of faith this year :)

Jackster

Just got back from OSH (orchard supply hardware), and they had 6-packs of tomatoes for $2.49

The Target had 6-packs for $2.19, mostly varieties with "girl" or "boy" in the title. They had single plants also, some over 14" tall, still in the 3" pots! :O They had one Early Girl in a gallon pot, with flowers on it. It was $2.99. If I planned to grow such varieties, I would have bought in.

On a side note, Target's 54" cages were $11.99 *gasp*!!!! Of course, they were very heavily built. They might survive being run over by a car.

HEB Plus in Kyle TX, just south of Austin is selling their tomato plants for $0.50 each. They have the usual hybrids plus a bunch of heirlooms including black krim, cherokee purple, brandywine and others. They even have JD Special C-Tex, which I have not been able to find anywhere else.

I think they are trying to get rid of them as it is a bit late to be planting right now in Central Texas.

Nearby at a Ben Franklin store they are going to be selling them for 99¢ this year.

Dean