Dayton "Dirt" - January 13, 2012

The warm weather this past week has been welcomed by almost everyone but as I stated in my January 6th blog it can create problems for plants too.

On the upside, anyone who heats with natural gas and is on a floating rate, costs are going down. In fact the gas company may even run out of storage space due to heavy production in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia and because of mild winter temperatures. Well do I remember the dreaded gas meter indicator clicking round and round when the price for the gas alone was closer to 8.00 per MCF instead of the now 4.50 on the floating rate.

While the nursery will save greatly on natural gas costs this year as compared to 2 and 3 years ago, other costs have risen such as pot and flat prices for our greenhouse product. However, we did lower prices on many greenhouse products last year and did not raise others that have remained the same for years and found that our total revenue and profit was up over the last two year’s average.

I’d like to see such a strategy of some lower prices in the grocery store but I think that would be just wishful thinking.

Our seminars are getting closer and with mine being the first one on February 4th, I’m having to do a lot of research as I’m finding out that I don’t know enough about some of the trees I’ll be speaking about.

So far, winter has been “good” to us but we still have a long way to go.