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Sylvagrow composts

lynne236lynne236 Posts: 4
in Fruit & veg
Sylvagrow composts are wonderful but for me only as an occasional (expensive) treat.  I keep seeing them advertised as prices in the £7-£9 a bag range, but in reality they cost aroung £16-£18 a 50L bag, and the advert on Gardeners World magazine Secret Garden even prices thm (10 best peat free composts) at £8.99 on Amazon, and when you get there it's more like £13.00 a bag - even with free postage this is not possible.  Can anyone please explain?  

Posts

  • JennyJJennyJ Posts: 9,637
    Retailers can change prices any time they like, so adverts, review articles etc go out of date. I think anyone offering free delivery on a 5l sack of compost is actually going to be including it in the price so probably the same again as you'd pay in a garden centre. If you've seen a particular price advertised recently you could try contacting that retailer and asking them to honour it but I don't think there's anything to say they have to.
    Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
  • lynne236lynne236 Posts: 4
    Sorry I should have said 50 litre bags, and it seems to be that if you live in the South it's about half the price of the North.  I did ask one retailer and they said it's just too expensive to deliver to the North, so I guess garden centres/Homebase/Wickes etc just don't order it in.  I live in Scotland.

  • BenCottoBenCotto Posts: 4,503
    Here’s the map of their stockists and you’re right with your assertion that Scotland is not well serviced. https://melcourt.co.uk/where-to-buy/ I am surprised by the comment that the compost varies in price by such a degree. In my experience most retailers charge the RRP - £8.99 I think - often with a 2 bags for £16 incentive. Generally speaking the compost is sold through independent garden centres and not in chain DIY stores.
    Rutland, England
  • lynne236lynne236 Posts: 4
    I found it on all kinds of sites, and even places like Marshalls, T & M, Suttons and Amazon, Crocus and Sarah Raven price it high.  You can pay up to £18 for 50L before delivery charges.  It seems if you live in Devon or Hereford or Cornwall it's cheap as chips, from £6 for 50L!
  • LunarSeaLunarSea Posts: 1,635
    BenCotto said:
    I am surprised by the comment that the compost varies in price by such a degree. In my experience most retailers charge the RRP - £8.99 I think - often with a 2 bags for £16 incentive. Generally speaking the compost is sold through independent garden centres and not in chain DIY stores.

    I agree. I'd never seen it before but found the large Bridgemere GC near Stoke-on-Trent (now owned by Blue Diamond) had huge stocks of it, all at the sort of price Ben mentioned. They also had the Sylvagrow Peat-Free John Innes 1,2 & 3 as well. But the thing that really surprised me was just how many Peat-Free multi-purpose composts they had. At least five different brands, including their own Blue Diamond. Things are looking up!
    Clay soil - Cheshire/Derbyshire border. 

    I play with plants and soil and sometimes it's successful
  • FireFire Posts: 17,397
    The industry of substrates is really the industry of trucking and transport. Composts, manures, gravels etc are very cheap, very heavy materials. So essentially we get the materials for free and pay for the labour, storage, petrol, loading, tax etc.  The economics of stocking and selling these are so difficult, especially for smaller businesses and even more so now when petrol costs, driver wages and business over heads are going through the roof.

    If you can find a big garden centre or nursery that has a lot of its own storage space and a lot of staff then you might be able to find Sylvagrow there with a lower mark up. My small, local GC in north London is currently selling 50ltrs of Sylva for £12. An aggregates firm fairly close by is selling loose peat-free for £90 per tonne. So that is the route I just took. Again, the compost was essentially free, and we paid for all the processing, labour, petrol, driving and time for loading and unloading.

    Any medium with elements like vermiculite, coir etc, will also be paying to ship these from across the world, wash them out, store them,  etc.
  • FairygirlFairygirl Posts: 54,016
    It's simply not worth the cost of travelling to one of the [very few] stockists up here, so unless you live near enough one @lynne236 , it's probably better to just try something else.
    I'm at least an hour's drive from the nearest one. Pointless. 

    I tried the Miracle Gro one recently. Seems ok, so far.  :)
    It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....



    I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
  • lynne236lynne236 Posts: 4
    Thanks for all the comments, I agree, time to give up. If I'm ever in the south though I'll pick up a couple just as a treat!
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