Grown in uk or imported

[pumkinlover]

I have been thinking of buying some more blueberry plants. I normally use a UK based  company who have been great in the past, grown in Yorkshire.
Was talking to Mr Curmudgeonly on the allotments of my plans and he says that he buys from local "Nursery" who I suspect buy in lot of plants from Holland. He says they were great plants and cheap but now no good as "always get a virus after 4 year"
We have so many diseases in the UK due to plants brought in from the continent, wonder if that is the reason why.

[pumkinlover]

[johhnyco15]

i would have thought that all plants from the eu should have  a passport stating they are virus free so it should be just like buying from the uk maybe the garden  center takes its own cuttings and the original stock is infected just a thought

[caroline7758]

Which company do you use? As I'm in Yorkshire it would be good to support a local company.

[pumkinlover]

R V Rogers, based in Pickering.

[Malcolm Brown]

Yes, R. V. Roger are very good and certainly grow their own.  It is good for British growers if you can buy stock that has been grown here.

[squeezyjohn]

I bought all my blueberry plants on the allotment from Trehane Nursery - which specialise in blueberries and are based in Dorset. I can't recommend the plants highly enough ... all 4 of mine are going in to their 3rd year nice and strong despite having a very close encounter with some deer in their first winter.  The people who run it were the first people to grow blueberries in the UK commercially (and they still do) - so there is plenty of very good advice from them too.

They are definitely not the cheapest out there ... I will say that!  But I really believe that they're good plants, and that extra money spent made sure I acidified the soil and did the job properly.  We had a really bumper crop of berries this year!  My previous half-hearted attempts using much smaller plants from garden centres all withered and failed within a couple of years.

[squeezyjohn]

It's also worth bearing in mind that it could be easy for Mr. Curmudgeonly to have blamed the plants failing on a virus when on lots of UK soil types they fail due to the ground not being acid enough for them.

[pumkinlover]

I never get time to bother growing bedding plants, but like to have some and Yay! just found a local nursery where  they grow their own bedding.
That's me sorted then!