The end of august usually signals the start of the spring bulb-planting season, when the garden centres and supermarket shelves are packed to capacity with every type of bulb that you could ever want. Every magazine that you buy has the usual glossy booklet advertising a huge variety of bulbs. But have you ever taken a few moments to look at the prices the charge.
Comparing the price of the same bulbs in my usual garden centre with those in the glossy booklet from a well-known firm shows a 100% differential, The garden centre being cheaper. The same applies to pre-packed bulbs in the supermarkets. Not only are they 80% more expensive but some of them are smaller low-grade bulbs.
Now most of the public who buy these bulbs, do so on impulse because of the coloured picture on the packing, and have no idea about the size of grade of bulbs. They look at the picture and imagine a nice bed of flowers in the early spring, and of they go with their purchase and one of the most expensive coloured pictures that money could buy. I have even saw these bulbs for sale in January, a full six months after they were first put on the shelves, and on close examination found that they were dried up and long past the point of recovery. On approaching the person in charge of that particular dept and explaining that the bulbs were already dead I just got a shrug of the shoulders and the dead bulbs were still there two weeks later, only this time they were marked down to half price. The moral of this story is that if you keep an eye out in your local supermarket early in the new year, you may be able to purchase lots of dead and dried up bulbs for half price.
Most perishable consumer products have a sell-by -date, but not bulbs. I think it is long past the time for such regulations to be put in place if supermarkets want to sell plants and bulbs for which the have not got trained staff to deal with. Why do gardeners always have to be the people who get ripped off, and especially those with the least knowledge?
Most other stores try to educate the public if they are not sure what they want to purchase.
