Plants Are Not Pavers with Christopher Uhland

[Music] Growers going to grow is where the nursery world meets the landscape job site. I'm going to break down plant supply, planting, and the substance behind it all. If plant availability substitutions and lastment scrambles are hurting your jobs, this is where strategy replaces stress. Better planting leads to better profit. Hosted by me, rain gifts, only on Perfle radio. Alright guys, welcome back to Growers Going to Grow on Terpsle Radio. This show is all about business side of plants. Planning, supply, timing, and the reality of how plants actually move from the field to the job site. Because if we're being honest, that's where a lot of projects go sideways. So today we're digging in exactly with that with the heavy hitter industry. We'll introduce you Chris, dealing with Harmony Hill Nurseries up in Web in Pennsylvania. Chris, thank you for having us. Thanks for coming on board. Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me. I appreciate being here. Yeah, so give us a quick rundown about Harmony Hill about your history and the industry. Yeah, I'm the owner of Harmony Hill Nursery. I used to say an upstart nursery. We've been in business just shy of 20 years now. You know, my original partner, he acquired the just under 75 acres. It was just an old derelict farm field that had sat vacant after the farmer had passed away. He would purchased it. It took a couple of years to put liners out in the field and get it going. And then finally, perfect timing. 2009, we opened up to sell shade trees, flowering under three trees. Right when the market was not needing so many trees in 2009. But, you know, fast forward, get through the economic downturn. 2014, things really started to take off force. You know, like, it sounds like everybody's talking about around the country. Nurseries had started to close up older nursemen were retiring. And we were just getting going upstart. And, you know, we've really got our feet underneath of us. They're in the late teens. And, you know, like a lot of nursery during COVID really took off even more. And, you know, pretty much every dollar we make and we were reinvesting. Three years ago, I guess it was Friday, February, second, 2020, 23. I purchased the former Topa Hawk in nursery. Again, she was looking to retire. So, great timing. I bought all the assets up there and doubled the size of our growing operation. Yeah. So, I mean, you had a full journey from a small nursery building up from the ground up all the way through to who you are today. And, you know, doing a little bit of research into you're all over the place, you know, and definitely an advocate for the industry. So, you've got a lot of of information that's behind you. A lot of experiences that are behind you. And your main market is who exactly? I'll say, like here, first thing in the springtime, our main market is re-holesaylers. Distribution nurseries, you know, to fill their yards here in, you know, say, marks to like middle of April. You know, probably 75% of our business is going to the re-holesayl clientele, occasionally some retail yards. And then, you know, by, you know, early to mid-April, you know, the local contractors here in Philadelphia. And then a few sporadically throughout the Northeast, even as far north as Toronto. We have landscape contractors, you know, buying one or two trees all the way up through, you know, tractor trailer loads for projects, you know, through, through Thanksgiving or so. Yeah, absolutely. So, it sounds like, you know, you definitely have a foothold. You know, getting into wholesale nurseries is, from my experience, also, a challenge to be a good vendor that can have the right quality, the right price, and the right quantity, even when they need it, to get into wholesale nurseries and to really, to specialize in that can be a challenge. So, you know, that speaks to the volume of the operation that you have just as a start. Because, you know, when I was first looking at doing this podcast, I put out a LinkedIn post of asking for people to participate and what their thoughts were. And you said something that pretty much summed up this entire podcast. So, I knew that you had to be the first official guest on the podcast. And you said that plants are being treated like widgets in jobs that plants aren't payers. You know, from your perspective as a grower, you know, what does that mean? And how long has this been a common occurrence in the industry? Yeah. So, I worked at Hansen Nurseries prior to starting Harmony Hill. And, you know, I didn't really notice that too much there was containerized stock. You know, annuals, perennials, grasses, shrubs, and trees. And, you know, like your one gallon is all the way up to, I think, like, 45, 50 gallon containers. But I really noticed it, you know, once we got started here at Harmony Hill, and, you know, guys, you know, they're buying their palettes, they're buying mulch, and they bring it back to their yard or their job site, they all float it. And it might sit in the driveway, you know, a week or two as the project's getting constructed. And I'm going to say easily, 2012, 13 somewhere around there. I delivered a load of trees. It was late spring, early summer, maybe just before the 4th of July, June, as father's day. And I delivered a load of stuff. And they were all floating everything right into the driveway. They were doing like the backyard, beautiful walkways, you know, whatever brand, flagstone. It was looking really nice. And it was getting hot. And I remember telling the gentleman, I said, hey, man, we're offloading here, you know, it was like 10 o'clock. I said, you should really get it off the driveway before this afternoon. You know, the plant material is going to bake. And, you know, nothing was fresh, Doug, it was dug early in the spring, you know, March April. And like a week later, he called me back and his, hey, Chris, man, we got some problems with some of these plants. They've faded and some of them are cooked. Like, oh, man, what is going on? So I, it wasn't that far from the nursery. I'll say 15 minutes. So I drove down there. Everything was exactly where I left it like a week, week and a half before on the hot black top. Hooking it. And, and I say, hey, man, they had some sprinklers set up like just a, you know, a lawn sprinkler that would go over here. Yeah. And, I mean, like things were beyond, you know, building point, terrier pressure was going, these were crisp. And it was now all of a sudden, my fault. And I've noticed it from that point, you know, we document like when we deliver plants, you know, are they going right into the ground or they, you know, going to be staged somewhere. And I have my drivers say, hey, you know, how are the plants handled? You know, were they rolled off the back of a, well, I don't know about a cook, but off the side of it. Yeah, dropped. Yeah. And then the root balls are destroyed. Or they've picked up with the nursery gels or even a pallet floor. You know, I've seen where they've trees have been picked up by a palat work and the root ball falls right through and scuffs the whole side up. And then the root ball that was beautiful is now pancakes. So this is something I've seen for easily a decade or more that I presume, you know, guys that are deeper in the industry more veteran than I have seen it a lot longer than I have. But I picked it up right away. I can tell you that every single nursery, every single salesman at every single nursery has had that exact conversation at minimum once or twice of getting that call a week later. So, hey, your plants are dying. It's always your plants after they're delivered, right? It's always the nursery. It's still nursery plant some else never their plants after delivery. And they tell you the same thing. I've had that person happen to me with Japanese use and with with great murals and things like that. They just get unloaded at the yard or at the job site and they get I get a call a week later or sometimes a middle of summer. It's just days later. It's the end of the week. Hey, look, these things are turning brown. These things are dead. Why would you sell me bad trees? Like, no, no, no, no. You unloaded them like something that that I started doing was I had my own truck drivers, whenever they delivered, not outside haulers. I haven't taken a picture. Right. After I've make them sign the invoice, which said that hey, look, you're a possession of these are now these are now your your products. And I make them take a picture of the look. You know, and send it to me a little text message just to make sure hey, look, this is the condition that they were dropped off in. Right. If you didn't water them, etc. Then I can't help you. Unfortunately, and and same thing, you know, sometimes the damage from being dropped that broken root ball. It isn't, isn't obviously noticeable, but it's something that shows up down the road. And it's for whatever reason, it always turns into it's the nurseries fault, it's nurseries fault. So I know completely what you mean. But every single sales rep that they've been in the business for more than a year or two. They had that exact same story I can just about guarantee it. Yeah. So we dealt with some some sales rep that are that are newer and you know, they've called back to hey, Chris, you know, we had this condition of this issue that popped up. And you kind of, you know, understand that the job site or that the customers yard and you got to you got to train them again. The new guys, you know, we'll grow trees here in the ground, you know, three, four, five, six years. They're healthy. You dig it. You put it in it in our holding yard. You know, we had we would ship everything with with compost wood chips drip irrigation on the top. And it's beautiful and healthy for, you know, a month, two months. It ships out on the jobs. And immediately there's an issue like well, something happened. once it left here. - Yeah, absolutely. From, you know, is this something that you feel has always been present that you've solved, you know, from your first days in the industry or is this something that's becoming more and more common? - I'd say it's probably becoming more and more common as we're shifting away from the industry, being, you know, horticulturalist to now becoming businessmen, businessmen and women. You know, we're learning so much about marketing, so much about sales, so much about business. And we might not be leaning on our horticultural background anymore as the staple of the business. - Yeah, absolutely. And also that I have, I work with what sales coaching and what I see a lot of is people being hired from completely outside of the industry. You know, they aren't horticulturalist. You know, actually I've a opinion, it's a separate topic we may have a conversation, but I believe that the best salesmen actually aren't horticulturalist. - Yeah. - Typically I find that people that just love plants for plant sake, they love plants and have a good conversation, but sometimes I'm the sales spirit, but you know, I've even seen some companies go as far as having doing extra pre-shipment care, being watered in, I mean, just way more than they ever have been treating it with additional products to get a little bit extra boost and also given their clients a post delivery instruction manual. Oh, hey, look, you just got a delivery of hydrangeas. Here's how to take care of them. You know, so it's trying to be as proactive as we can. And you know, because we're not always dealing with people that know plants, now we have to bridge that gap a little bit. - Correct. - Especially when it's time when we're out doing summer dig. You know, I might not go out and dig a cherry in the middle of the summertime, but some other things will go harvest. And you know, we have standard operating procedures set up to harvest them and we tell guys, don't let them sit here for a week. You know, you gotta come pick it up like the day we ask you to, you know, because like pavers, all right. So, you know, maybe some pavers get ordered and, oh, hey, you know, it rained, I can't get out there to get them immediately. And, you know, so they sit there and we're plants, you know, they're living breathing things and they can lose terror pressure if they're not installed immediately. So they gotta, you know, they gotta get, you know, installed back in the ground. And the land's good. - Yep, absolutely. So like take us through a basic process that from, you know, what actually happens between an order of us placed to the plant is, is ready ship and it is delivered. - In the spring time or the summertime process? - Let's talk about spring. - So we'll separate between spring and summer just so we can be well-rounded. - Perfect. So in the spring time, like somebody will call or email an order and it comes into my office, you know, Sarah Abilio get it. They'll check to make sure we have that plant first off and then make sure we have the size they're looking for and the quantity they're looking for. So just say, hey, you know, they need Esquilas Pavia, six to seven, well, we're sold out of six to sevens. We have five to sixs. So we'll offer that back to them and they say, hey, yeah, you know what, we're happy just to have them from you guys, we'll take the five to six instead of six to seven. So we'll, we make sure everything's good with that. And so it comes in our office, we'll print it out and it goes to our tagging agent, Sawyer. So Sawyer will go out, make sure everything's tagged that day. And you know, in the spring time, sometimes like here, early in the spring, like February, March, we don't necessarily have a real backlog yet, but if you get into like mid-March and to March, especially early April, everybody's getting their orders in. So there can be a backlog. It might be, you know, a week, you know, hopefully not 10 days, it depends on backlog and weather, but you know, it'll be first come first served for the digging crew to get out there and get it harvested. So, you know, so we'll get it tagged, get the ribbons on it and then he has two sets of pay for. One set that will come back into the office saying everything was tug. Another set goes to our H2A crew that'll go out there and harvest it. And so the H2A crew, you know, as soon as they get to that order, they'll go out, you know, they'll get the canopy tied up, they'll get a dug, dropped in, you know, burrow a basket twine, you know, make sure the root flare is exposed. And then they'll typically bundle the order or you know, they'll drive around on the wagons, throw it on the wagon needle back, drive them into the yard. And if they're coming like that day or next day, maybe they'll stay on the wagon so you don't have to touch it as many times. Or, you know, hey, you know, we're waiting for some trees to come from our redding site and come down so they'll get staged in our yard. And like I said, typically we want to have plants rolling, you know, not just, you know, for, you know, to keep us moving, but also for yard space. Because if we jam up our yard with too many orders, you know, then we don't have room for chucks to turn around, you know, we can't get to orders efficiently because they get buried in the back. And plants just sit here, you know, nothing wants to sit too long above ground. You know, and then we got to untie, especially if a plant is starting to bud out and having fun, it runs out and leaves out. Then you got to untie it and space that material out because once it's leafed out and the canopy's tied up, you know, the leaves aren't gonna, yeah, the leaves are gonna be growing, you know, phototropically, which might not be the way they would be once it's untied. Also, you know, maybe the bottoms of the foliage might be more exposed to sunlight so the bottoms get sunburned. And, you know, once the, the, the foliage comes out and then you have tippy elongation. And, you know, the overall plant is not growing the way it would be if it was properly spaced and opened up. - Yeah. - So, and every now and then we'll have a few guys say, hey, Chris, I need this plant, but I can't get to it till maybe June. So, yes, we have that brought. - Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask. I was gonna ask because, you know, I've had it multiple times where a customer says, hey, here's my order. Can you put it on a truck next week? And I say, yeah, man, not a problem. I'll get it all ready for you. I've got the order. I've already checked on it. I've already sent a pictures and they're great. And then it comes time to staging material. And it's staged and they're like, wait, hold up. This happened on the job site or there is eight inches of rain coming. Can you push the truck off? At that point, you know, as a business owner, as a nurse, you gotta make the decision to arrestock it or do I try to hold it in a staging yard. So, I'm when things like that happen, I mean, it can throw a severe risk, not only from the space perspective, but like you're saying, with just proper plant care, you know, that plant is expecting to get the same amount of water. It's expecting the same quality of water where that holding yard, it's set up to be more efficient than necessarily a growing operation. You know, and that can be a big challenge. So, I mean, from, you know, you're holding yard from the order to the holding yard, what kind of timeline are we looking at that would work from a short average time span? You know, I'd love it to be less than seven calendar days. By the time it's dug and it's out the door, whether it's on our truck or their truck, you know, ideally less than a week, less than a week. You know, if we can have it, if we can really tighten it up to two to three days, you know, that's the maximum efficiency 'cause then plants don't get buried. There's no chance for a tree to get bumped into by somebody else. And we've even had it where other customers have come in and said, "Hey, I really like that, you know, wildfire black gum, I want that tree." And then it's, then it's the last one. They really want it. And then heaven forbid they come in a week later. Hey, that tree's still sitting there. Does that other customer really want it? And then it's calling up there, "Hey, do you want this? 'Cause if not, I can see up to somebody else." And, you know, we're all here to make money. Don't get me wrong. You know, money's what drives, which should be driving all of us. That's what we pay our bills. And it's, you know, your property, everything. And, you know, when stuff, you know, since you lose the opportunity to sell it. And I've even had situations where, you know, like you said, whether it's your rain, you know, a form and walk off the job site, you know, somebody that's doing the grading didn't do it, you know, payers got backlogs so they couldn't do the installation. And I'm sitting there left with, you know, what, whether it's printables, a bunch of shrubs or, you know, a trailer to trees. What do I do with these? This isn't my fault. I did what I was supposed to do. So you try to, you know, have some empathy for the client, for the customer. But you also say, "Hey, man, like, all right, so if you don't want this till, you know, till September or October, I'm going to sell this material and I'll get you fresh stuff then." You know, there might be a full dig hazard, but it's going to be cheaper than me charging you a babysitting fee, you know, a holding fee. So we have had customers that say, "Hey, you know, the Landscape Architect came out and told me that they have to have that tree." All right. So, we have holding space to hold roughly a thousand B and B plants. So, you know, that plant material, you know, I might charge a little bit more for some of it because it sits here because, you know, my guys are taking it, they're putting it in a spot, putting compost and wood chips around it, the drip irrigation down the rows. And then, you know, depending on what it is, you know, sometimes it gets a shot of liquid fur, you know, throughout the year to keep it looking good. Maybe it has to have some insecticide on it for Japanese beetles or spotted land or flyer, whatever it looks like. we're maintaining, we're taking care of it. And so if we would have sold it to you and it would be in your yard, then you could do that. But if it's in my yard, you know, I could have sold it in the springtime to another customer, or I can sit here and maintain it for you. So we, that's why customers say, well, if I didn't take it, it's going to sit there anyway. Well, I could sell it, but like I need to charge you, you know, 10 or 15%, depending on what it is, what I know my inputs are going to be throughout the summer until you come to pick it up in July, August, September, October, whatever have you. You know, it's not a huge amount of money, but it's also my efficiency, you know, because I'm pulling guys off of other projects that are financially rewarding to maintain these plans. Yeah. And meanwhile, what do you think there was going on through their head? Well, you're, that's all the things that go on on your head. What do you think is going on in their head? So yeah, just hold it, you know, uh, uh, uh, yeah, so before I started Harmony Hill with my original business partner, you know, and I worked in Hanson's, I took a, I'll say a two to three year hiatus and I worked for a landscape contract and architecture firm. So we had a yard there. We had, so I see that side of it as well, but you know, uh, you know, the whole business thing about, you know, planning to fail is failing to plan, yeah, failing to plan is planning to fail. And you know, a good contractor, I would figure is going to have a holding yard set up to be able to pull those plants any day, they need them, you know, because all of a sudden, hey, maybe the job got sped up and so they can jump on the job or, you know, they hate, hey, you know, we have some time for them to go to plan these trees in two to three weeks. It doesn't matter when we do it, but I have like maybe some maintenance to do in there. So whenever we have perfect days, I'll just send them to Karel. Well, they can have that crew pull the trees out that morning and go do the planting versus calling me up and maybe I don't have them ready. You know, it's, you know, it's, uh, it goes back to the efficiency and better business planning as well. Yeah, absolutely. You know, so two questions I'm kind of thinking about. Do you do any kind of treatments once it's planted? You know, you've got to stage it for a little bit of time before it goes to the truck. Do you do any kind of rootball treatments? Depending on the time of the year, like in the spring time, um, usually not like I said, because the material is going out pretty rapidly. Um, in the summertime, um, I'll just say after new growth is hardened off, maybe, you know, second, third week in July, somebody needs something. I'll say a swamp way to quirk is by color. That that's something we will typically go out and summer dig. So like we said, you know, in order comes in, customers looking for two and a half to three inch caliper, you know, uh, Billy's like, yep, we have, you know, 12 of them out in the field. We can get them all 12 dug for you. Uh, so the soil got in tag. Typically, you know, we'll do that like in week one. And then what we really like is on Monday morning when my, when my field staff comes in, they'll go out and they'll, they'll trench, they'll dig a trench around the critical roots in the drip line of the tree. They'll come in and water it on Monday, hopefully by lunchtime. Um, and then, uh, Monday afternoon or Tuesday, we'll, we'll go out there and hit it with the root stimulant. There's products out there, like liquid roots or bioplex or whole ganex. We'll hit it with something. Uh, one of those liquid products, let it soak in. And then, uh, Tuesday afternoon, we'd like to shoot out again to the field and hit it with some more water. Uh, you know, uh, depending on the size of tree, you know, 25, 50 gallons, to really have everything soaked through. Get into the roots, goes up into the canopy and helps with that terrier pressure. And then watching the weather, hopefully what Wednesday morning will go out, um, you know, that six o'clock in the morning, you know, it's, it's bright and early compared to, you know, here now in the, in the winter, you know, dig, you know, six, seven, eight o'clock, try to finish up digging by like that 8, 8, 30 load everything up on a wagon, bring it in and we have a, a water pit. So, uh, we have a little bit of high shade. And then the, the water pit is about, I'll say 10 inches deep. And we fill it with water, obviously. And, uh, we'll throw in some of that liquid roots stimulant as well to really soak it up. And we tell customers, hey, if you can come in, Wednesday afternoon or Thursday and then get it replanted Thursday or Friday at the absolute latest, you know, the trees really affected really, really quickly and back in the ground. And then, you know, hopefully the contractor has, uh, you know, plant health care program in place to get that tree reestablished there in the summertime. Yeah, exactly. So let's say in the middle of summer, what's the, the longest that you'd be willing to hold a plant? Let's say you got an order for it, but they keep pushing, keep pushing, keep pushing. What's the longest you're willing or would like to hold a plant? Once it's harvested, like two to three days is really, you know, if they can't, like, so, so we, we've had this where customers will order it and then all of a sudden, like, Monday or Tuesday, you know, after we already started the process, they said, hey, you know, customer went on vacation, they said, we, you know, we don't want this for another like two weeks when they come back from the handphones or wherever, like, all right, well, we started the process. It's, we would rather start the process again in two weeks, rather chart, you know, and we charge, uh, roughly 15%, 18% around that for this, this summer dig fee. And I would, I would much rather, you know, we'll do whatever the customer asks within reason, but we'd tell them, hey, let's restart this again in two weeks. I don't want to dig it. I'd rather wait in two weeks. Yeah, do you do like a restocking fee when that something like that happens? Uh, yeah, well, I get, well, yeah, we'll get that the 15% upfront before we start this and then we'll charge from that 15 or 18, uh, summer dig fee again when we do it and, you know, one, two, three weeks, uh, down the road. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, whenever we're thinking about, you know, trading it and getting it ready, uh, and so let's move from, all right, we've gone through the process. We've got the order. We dug it. Um, we, we've treated it. It is now on a truck. It's at the job site. How does that whole time change and what are some best practices from spring as we move into summer? Yeah. So, uh, in the spring time, it's definitely a lot more forgiving than the fall. Um, I've gone to job sites. Um, uh, one was a, uh, a new HOA being built, new homeowner's association. And, uh, we, we dropped off a load of trees. Uh, I guess in two different spots, two track and trailers went in and the one, uh, the one foreman's like, Hey, you know, um, can you help me just pick apart some of these? You couldn't idea everything. So, yeah, sure. I'll stop by on my way home from work or whatever. And I went over all the trees or just criss-crossed and, oh, you couldn't get much worse, you know, they banged in, already got scuffed. But, uh, you know, that's again, worst case scenario. You know, when they get delivered, uh, especially in the spring time, whether they're fresh dug in March, or, you know, a little bit later in, uh, you know, end of April, early May, you know, I would still highly recommend they come to the job site or your yard and they get healed in, especially stood up and untied. Uh, if the buds are tight, like early mid, you know, maybe it's something that's going to pop late. Uh, so in, uh, end of March, they're still tight. You can leave the heads tied up for a few days. They are definitely, uh, rather forgiving, um, but get them stood upright and spaced apart. So, they're not going to touch each other. Um, when you do have untied a canopies. Uh, you know, if you're gonna offload from your, your truck or trailer, um, and they're gonna be planted in like two days, maybe have, uh, you know, root ball to root ball and you have them stood upright. And, you know, you can leave the canopies tied up because they're gonna get planted right away before they, they get, uh, before they leave out. So, you know, that's really optimal to do it early in the spring. But, um, like, if the trees have been sitting here, you know, they said, hey, we're not going to be able to take them till like mid-May. Uh, so we, we'll heal them in. We, we, maybe we charge a few bucks to hold them for them. You know, we space them apart and then we have to retie them. Um, you know, you know, uh, we don't use treated burlap. Um, that's just a, uh, I'll say it's, uh, it's an ethics, ethics thing with us. We use a heavier 10 ounce burlap versus a lighter grade. Uh, so sometimes, you know, maybe in mid-May, we have to put a, uh, diaper on it, a new sheet of burlap. We'll do that to make sure they're not falling apart, uh, and ship them out and we try to inform the customer, hey, when you offload, you know, you're, you're gonna want to space them apart, you know, whether you have, you know, like maybe six by six chunks of wood or cinder blocks or leftover pavers, uh, to keep them upright so they don't lay over, you know, well, I've seen leaves phototrifically, reposition themselves, um, after just a couple days because they, they, they fell over. Um, you know, in theory, they're, they're okay. They will adjust themselves possibly that season. You know, when they drop next year, they'll come back. They'll be, this should be fine again. Yeah. Hey, that's, you know, as we move into summer, you know, how does that, that change from a spring where it's, you know, they're not leaked out. They could hold for a little bit longer, but let's say it is a dead of summer. I mean, how does that change, you know, what you would suggest of protruding once it's delivered? Yeah. So again, with customers, I always tell them, like, I'm sure they're, they're very good at their business, that contracting, whatnot, but if you're not going to plant that tree, you know, a day or two after we deliver it, probably a day after it gets, lands, let us keep it. Yeah. In the other week, I'll, I'll take care of it another week, you know, just pay me to take care of it versus going to your job site or yard and it flounders. Just let us take care of it. This is what we do. Yeah, let it go there, get it back in the ground right away. And I'm a big proponent, you know, being involved in the agricultural industry, you know, you know, being a certified arborist, being a registered consultant, I go to a lot of classes, CE used to keep myself educated, maybe more than some contractors do, maybe more than some other nursery. But I want to learn as much as I can about trees. So I've come to realize that a plant health care program is very important almost critical in some new installation sites. So when you plant, having game plan in place, maybe it's having gator bags ready to install or whatever brand of bag you want to slowly have moisture get back into the soil in the root ball as well as the critical root zone. Because we all know, all-growing a hole, you need to have the soil loosened up, typically twice as wide as the ball. No, that's just not to loosen up the soil just to make us work more. It's to loosen the soil. So water can penetrate, roots can penetrate into that. And then with the plant health care program, especially going into the fall, like September, October, hopefully you're going to do some sort of root stimulant or tree fertilization program, having it in that critical root zone, not just on top of the root balls. When that soil is loosened up, everything can penetrate through the open pore space and get to the root system. Yeah, absolutely. So let me ask you this, kind of a different direction, but sometimes it's coming to mind, you know, in thinking back to my experience of delivering to contractors and to many, many industrial, commercial parking lot. How many, let's say, just when you're experience of Harman Hill, how many contractors have asked you for, hey, Chris, how should I take care of this? How many of those do you feel like have asked you what you recommend for plant health care, for tree health care, for post-delivery health care versus how many call backs you got or those calls of, hey, it's dead? Would you say you've gotten? Yeah, I'll be honest, there's some younger guys getting into the industry, whether, you know, they went to college or trade school, you know, in their early 20s, mid 20s, they'll ask some of that. You know, sometimes we get caught. I'll be the first one to say I was the same way, coming out of college, you know, you have your back, so it's great, I know everything I'm good to go. But you still have some of the younger guys that maybe they went for turf grass, you know, agronomy, something along those lines, and they're not necessarily tree guys yet. So they'll ask a little bit and some of the younger guys, you know, we have a flyer that we've pulled information from the international side of agriculture. And then even here in Pennsylvania, we have the Pennsylvania Certified Border Culturalist program. And we have a lot of those manuals, we'll pull information and we'll offer that. You know, we even have information on our website, we'll direct, especially the younger guys and newer customers, we'll try to send them in that direction to hopefully, you know, get their feet underneath of them. But then you still have guys that, you know, maybe that could use that refresher. We don't get too many questions about it, it's more us, you know, offering that information. You know, even my office Sarah, you know, the first person that answers the phone when you call is another certified arborist. You know, so having the credentials and we hope to have those open conversations to help contractors with that. So callbacks, we don't get a ton of callbacks, you know, in the summertime, we might get a couple, but we're very strict on, you know, making sure that the customers that order in the summertime are very well aware of what they're getting themselves involved with. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's something that I've been kind of playing around the idea and of is I've seen it for annual growers, perennial growers, some of the more that tender stuff. But I, maybe you've seen it, but I haven't seen someone like yourself give a video, a demonstration of a post delivery, automated email, hey, look, you just got a delivery from Harmony Hill Nursery. Here's how you should take care of it just to make sure because, you know, not everybody wants to ask for the information, you know, you've got like civilian guys that are open, they don't, they understand, hey, look, just ask for my answer for you. But, you know, to, again, help bridge that gap just a little bit more, maybe they don't have a plant health care guy, maybe they don't have a horticulturist that is super helpful on their team. Have you thought about doing something like that of a post delivery guide or video or something along those lines? Are you seeing that done? I don't recall seeing that being done. I know I've had the conversation, Morris Arboretum, which is the official Arboretum for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. And so, you know, University of Pennsylvania has a great program on, all kinds of things, soup to nuts, plant health care. It's something we had talked about, never really came to fruition, you know, it's one of those things you wake up at one o'clock. Hey, that's a great idea. And unfortunately, not enough hours in the day, but it's something that, you know, maybe we should really sit down and, you know, when you slow down a little bit in the afternoons in the summertime or in the winter to put something together, especially like you're seeing, you know, you know, in the stage or in this day of, you know, videos to have something on YouTube. And then even you have it feed through our website and social media outlets. It could probably help a lot, a lot of our customers as well as, you know, prospective customers or people around the country. Yeah, absolutely. And the best thing is if you do it once, I mean, you can embed it in email, you can put it on your website, you can have it on your invoice links. I mean, you could be anywhere and everywhere. You can send it once and it's done. It's good for years, you know, as long as you know, major advancements change, which, I mean, I don't know what it would take to be, to edit a video like that in, you know, in years, that video could be beneficial for years to come. And then what I'd be interested in is it feels on YouTube, let's say, or, you know, just because that's the first one's coming to mind. Wonder what the view count would look like, because if you send it out a thousand times and you see after a year, that's got, you know, 200 views, that's 200 people that, you know, compared to the average, I mean, how many people do you think actually ask the question after delivery a year, five, 10 maybe? Top's. Top's right. But if you have 200 views, you know that you helped 20 times more people with the same question. They just weren't, you know, they didn't want to ask. I think it'd be really beneficial. I get, I haven't seen the video. I don't know if anyone that's, that's listening has seen that. I would love to get a, send me a link to it. But I think it'd be really beneficial. Yeah. Yeah. Open that conversation. And I know there's more than, you know, one way to go from point A to point B. I visited some customers up in New England. And, you know, sometimes those, those guys, if they're holding something for a few weeks or even some of the Reholtz dealers, they'll wrap it, you know, with the heavy grade, you know, saran wrap type of looking product. You know, some guys, you know, stand up right with, with Cinder blocks, with stone yards, with a lot more irrigation than I would maybe want. You know, and then other, other guys are doing exactly what I'm doing, you know, using wood chips or mulch to heal them in and run drip irrigation on top. So I realize there's more than, more than one way to accomplish this. But, you know, at least get the juices flowing for it for the thought process besides, you know, just offloading and letting them lay in a, in a stone lot. Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, Chris, kind of wrap us up. There's, I've got a couple more questions. You know, the first one, you know, being around this, this holding pattern and things like that. You were to put it into, you know, one elevator, one minute pitch of, hey, look, I wish more contract with do this, uh, pre-year and post delivery. What would that sound like? Irrigation. Irrigation. On the root balls. And individually as well, not just a spray on a clump of plants, right? Correct. Correct. Yeah. If they're not going to be, you know, distributed in a couple days or less than a week typically, you know, it goes in their holding beds and it gets, you know, depending on the size of the root ball, uh, one to three, you know, spaghetti lines on each root ball. So there's water getting right on that root ball. You know, there's no over spray. There's no fuller canopy spray for fungal issues. It's getting the water individually on each tree to soak into that root ball. Yeah. And don't just get the burlap wet. And, you know, actually soak it in. Yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, kind of, so to take that hat off the holding time, let's talk in more general terms, something that I want to ask everyone that's on a DS, everyone that I interview, um, if what's one thing that you wish that you would shout from the mountain tops that you wish, landscapers and contractors or even landscape architects would do is one thing differently. What would it be? Understand how to harvest a tree. Yeah. I wish, you know, I've said this before, you know, that like when you go to college or a trade school, you know, they teach you everything and then you can, you know, turf grass, you know, contracting design architecture, you can go from there. But I wish that everybody would spend time at a production nursery. You know, maybe sometimes a garden center will, will take you out there or re a wholesale will take us, they're the young staff out to a production nursery. But I wish everybody would spend time to come out and see what we do. You know, far too often they don't understand the manpower, the equipment and the time that it takes to. You know, line a tree out in our fields, grow it and then harvest it. They don't understand it. You know, I haven't heard this in a while, but I heard it a while ago, where hey, you know, why does a tree cost X amount of dollars? I go out in the woods and they're free. Well, that tree was a root prune. It wasn't the can, it wasn't trimmed. You know, there's so much that goes into it. And, you know, I've gone to some schools to just recruiting and talking about what we do. And I'll say more often than not, everybody thinks that we still plant every tree by hand with a shovel. We go out there and plant everything in the field. And then when we harvest them, they think we go out there with our, you know, our spade and hand dig it and somehow get it in this bar basket. I couldn't tell you the last time I hand dug it, anything. I planted a few things by hand, you know, maybe we'll have like a one or two things that are, you know, we have like a little specialty block. So maybe I'll get some unique JAPNAPE work drafted ever green I'll plant by hand. But almost everything we do is mechanized. And I really wish everybody in our industry, an LA, a contractor, a plant buyer would just come out and just, you know, take a tour for two hours, come out and see what we do. Yeah. And don't just bring your estimators out. Take your project managers out because they're the ones actually interacting with the plants. You know, the estimators, yeah, okay, it's great to see the quality and things like that. So you're interacting with for sales, but bring your project manager out, bring your foreman out. And let him understand what it means to be in a nursery so they can understand and learn directly from the people that are literally boots on the ground, you know, give them some experience as well. You know, I'm thinking back to how one of the things I'm not proud to say, but I remember distinctly is that all my years growing up in the nursery business and doing sales, you know, from literally coast to coast is I had in my entire professional, you know, wholesale production nursery career. I had two landscape architects ever stopped by and just stopped by just to see what a nursery even looks like. And we are the very first nursery. We were prime location in Oral, St. Louis, and we had two stop by to see what a nursery looks like. When you go to trade shows, you know, if a landscape architect walks by, it's almost like what are y'all doing here? I'm never gonna see, I always open them with open arms. Like thank you for being here. But you know, it's not often that people come out and experience the nursery and really understand that's, they're a huge disconnect. And I mean, that's exactly what this show is here for us to help us bridge that gap, help contractors and LAs understand what it means to get those plants from, dang near nothing, as a liner, all the way up to a beautiful plant on their projects. Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, I've exhibited, you know, I'm a big into networking. So, you know, my nursery, we exhibit at the Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show. We've done the American site of, or what is it, the landscape architects conference. You know, when it's been here in Philadelphia, Boston, when it comes to our neck of the woods here, the Northeast, we've been exhibiting. And now we've even gotten involved with the Pendel chapter, the Pennsylvania Dower chapter, American Society Landscape Architecture to exhibit there. You know, not to put them down or anything, because they're great, but you know, they want, you know, beautiful trees. I wish they'd stop by my booth. I realized there's some cool benches that are out there, some new water features, but you know, the plants, maybe I'm just biased, but I think the trees and the plants are what really make a project. You know, well, when I go look, you know, I'd like looking at beautiful stone, you know, I'm not a big paper guy, but you know, the water features, I like the plants. I think the plants really set something off. And, you know, granted, you know, a swamp white oak, you know, Quirk is by color, might not be the newest, greatest thing every year, but you know, to get out and learn to see what we're doing, you know, some of our technology may change over time, root pruning, pruning techniques and whatnot, but I'd love to have LA's come out. Now, I'm always thrilled. I love the showcase what we do when they do come out. - Yeah, absolutely. And that's a big part is just being out there, you know, something that I'm passionate about getting growers to be more out there and not just go to, you know, one trade show a year and call that marketing, you know, actually be out there and be proactive with the industry. But Chris, if there's someone right now that's listening, a landscape contractor, that's listening right now. And it will be your one piece of advice to help them be a better customer. - Plan ahead. - Plan ahead. - Plan ahead. - Plan ahead. - So the more time we can have to get an order processed, you know, whether it's here in the spring time or you know, it's, you know, end of April and the window is closing up, the more time we have, the more efficient we can be. You know, if somebody needs, you know, two swamp white oaks, two October glory red maples and two, you know, coosa dogwoods, you know, if I'm in one block and I can dig multiple orders at one time, that's fantastic. Instead of jumping all around, you know, you know, we as growers, wouldn't be as efficient as everybody else. So having orders in advance, that helps us prepare versus, you know, running around, you know, it's Tuesday morning, the contractor forgot the order, everything. His guys were on their way. Oh, man, you know, that's not neat. - We have had plenty of those. Hey, look, here's my order. I need it tomorrow and it's like two states away. Yeah. I can't do that. Like there's no, no time machine that I can make that happen, you know, that order they show up with the order and it's, you know, a thousand something plants and their gosh shows up with the trailer and then gets upset that it takes an hour to pull it. - Yeah, absolutely. The more advanced one is the better, absolutely. - Yeah, because if they give us heads up to, hey, you know, you know, here's Wednesday, I need my order tomorrow, tomorrow morning. Hey, like is there a chance that maybe you can bump it off to the afternoon? I have six guys already coming. It's gonna take time. And, you know, if we can plan ahead a little bit, you know, like I said earlier, you know, failing the plans, what is it? Planning the fails, failing the plan or whatever. Whatever it is. But yeah, you know, planning is critical for us. - Yep, absolutely. Well, Chris has been wonderful talking to you and learning about Harmony Hill, your experience and in helping, you know, bring some of these issues to the contractors and help them understand as well with the pain that we feel from our side. You know, Chris, if someone was interested in Harmony Hill or learning more about you about your company, how could we reach out to you? - You can check us out on, you know, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn under Harmony Hill Nursery LLC and always look up the hashtag #EatsLeagueTrees. - Wonderful. Chris has been great to have you and I look forward to many conversations in the future. - Thanks for having me. Have a great day. - Thanks for tuning in to Growers Gonna Grow. I've lived the nursery side of the business from the production side as well as the re-hold sale side. And this show is here to help you better understand how it all works behind the scenes. I'd love for you to subscribe and keep up with future recordings. I hope to see you there. While Growers Gonna Grow posted by TERFsupRatU. (upbeat music)