We were delivering plants today when it was -25 celsius (for those non metric folks out there -25 is way beyond brass monkey weather). I must be mad

Those temperatures are considered a good day up here in Northern Alberta. Then there are these people that walk out of a Home Depot with a plastic bag over their newly purchased plant in this cold weather.
Triple baggers up here.

Peter

yeah, but you’ve got a dry cold so you hardly notice it :)

Bin there, done that.
The trick I always used for extreme cold delivery (other than good wrapping) is to do the delivery in a T-shirt with no coat or sweater. If I could handle the cold then the wrapper plant is OK. You move pretty quick that way.

It’s stories like that keeps me happy I am plantscaping in San Diego. I had to put on long pants today...

:(

I always wonder how you guys up North handle the Winter. Just the extra cost of
heating the green/warehouse...
I would think you have to bring the trucks or vans inside the warehouse to load
them.
Can you really start an interiorscape business with basically no capital like you
can do in the southern states where you don’t have to deal with such
temperature fluctuations?

One evening while watching TV, I got an idea for a new use for body bags...insulated plant transport bags! Stand the plant inside the body bag, zip it up, and your plant is protected from cold weather, wind, etc. while you cart it in and out of buildings.

And you can actually buy body bags online:

http://armynavysuperstores.com/bodybag.htm

http://www.usabodybags.com/

http://www.evidentcrimescene.com/cata/body/body.html

Crazier ideas have come to me, so don’t shoot it down too fast. Think about it...it could work, it’s re-usable and costs about what a poly tarp costs in Home Depot.

Clem

Yes Clem, you can even buy them used at:

http://www.recycledbodybagsforyourplants.com

Ha, Patrice... you actually had me there for a while with that URL!

Jim, no matter how fab your weather is there in San Diego, we’re always wearin’ shorter shorts here in SoFla...

... and we’ve got the Super Bowl to boot ;)

Steve

So considering all of this "cold talk", I was wondering, like Patrice, how you people can keep any amount of inventory during these months? As for us in Texas, we had two cold months back to back. Last month’s natural gas bill was over $2,000.00. I’m scared to think about the current bill we haven’t received yet. We had numerous days in the twenties and the heaters ran non-stop.
Some scapers have told me they use propane or kerosene instead of natural gas. How do you’s guys up in the great white North keep your greenhouses warm?

LMAO!!!! Actually the body bags look like a great concept. But what do you think will work better for a 10" plant,torso/body parts or child size?
Steve, I don’t even want to think about you in short shorts at the Super Bowl watching the Dolphins NOT play for 25 years straight!

Buffalo, 4x losers, Bills gal in Freakin’ Cold Albany

Yes, Karen, my Giants had the pleasure of tacking one of those "L"s on Marv Levy’s resume way back when!

David,

We heat with natural gas as well, but our greenhouse heating systems may be designed a bit more for the northern climate and, thus, are more efficient and energy-saving than yours down south, where the cold weather is the exception and not the rule.

We have greenhouses with either double-inflated poly roofs over double-wall polycarbonate-glazed walls, or low-E glass greenhouses, both with heat curtains above the crops at night that save 30-40% on energy. We also have hydronic (hot water) in-floor radiant heating that heats the crop instead of just the air. This combination provides an even heating and heats the concrete floor so that heat is gently radiated at all times, not blown onto the plants with gas- or oil-fired unit heaters as in older greenhouses.

We are in the process of preparing to install replacement heat curtains that are rated at 70% energy savings, so they will save about half of our current costs to heat the greenhouses. But the utility bills (gas plus electricity to run the pumps, valves and other controls, plus the computer system that oversees all of that) do cost a lot of money to run and maintain.

One greenhouse operation I know of managed to lease a large tract of land next to a power plant for very little rent, plus they get free heat from the circulation into their heating system of the hot water produced by the plant’s processes before it’s recycled back into the plant. Now, that’s what I call sustainable greenhouse horticulture.

Clem

We actually set up a greenhouse inside our warehouse. Much easier to heat.

Trucks do come in at night. Saves warm up time in the AM.

Sometimes we will put an electric heater in the rear of the truck to warm it upwithout running the engine.

Otherwise, we keep little or no inventory, use local wholesalers, and ship the stuff out the same day we get it in.

JK

Winter is, oddly enough,our best time for sales (excluding this year)When I waltz into an office in the summer my clients look outside , see the green grass, the flowers in bloom and send me on my way.But when it’s below freezing,cold snowy and grey,generally crappy over all I become their best friend.If the installs were’nt such a bitch I’d be a happy guy.

We also do something that is an outgrowth of our wholesale plant business, which is packing plants on greenhouse carts that we then wrap with stretch-wrap film up to the top, with a solid shelf above the topmost shelf of plants, creating a kind of cargo container that can be rolled off or dropped down from one of our heated liftgate trucks and rolled into the building without getting chilled. It also eliminates a lot of the packing material that creates a mess, such as sleeves and boxes, and than can also speed up the actual installation process once inside the building.

Clem

Clem
That idea is so simple, efficient and inexpensive I can’t believe I never thought of that. Who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks.

I guess it takes an old dog to teach an old dog...we run in packs, right?

We figured that one out when we started delivering to supermarkets that have several loading dock doors that are always occupied by tractorless trailers, limiting the "active" doors available to one or two, which are fought over by numerous vendors’ trucks...first come, first served. So if you want to unload your freight, you need to be able to drop it on a cart using the liftgate of the truck and then push it up a ramp that leads to the door of the receiving department. Works like a charm, even in very cold and windy weather, snow or rain. Keeps hot sun off the top of the plants, too.

Clem

We were originally a part of a wholesale greenhouse operation and had the same cart set-up as Clem. I always hated to see the shrink-wrap wasted and always wondered if a giant cover could be made for them. I’m thinking one similar to grill covers, but with a zipper or velcro attachment for ease of use. Kind of like Clem’s idea of using body bags for plants.

Has anyone actually done anything like that?

Julie

One large grower in central New Jersey, Kube-Pak, uses carts with custom-made wraps made of heavy-gauge black shade cloth, hemmed and outfitted with velcro straps at the top corners and where the ends of the piece meet, so the entire cart can be wrapped in the cloth and closed tight with the velcro closures.

One problem is that this method works fine to keep plants from damage in the truck during shipping (i.e., the plants don’t rub up against one another on neighboring carts when the carts move a little during the drive), but the shade cloth is a screen, not an opaque material, so heat and cold can definitely travel inside to the plants. I guess you could substitute those blue or brown tarps you get in Home Depot for the shade cloth to get a nice cart-sized "body bag" for the purpose.

Aren’t we a bunch of little "re-inventers" here today!

Clem

Oh, and now I will put on my "green" hat and say that the reason for the disposable stretch wrap is because the carts full of plants get dropped at the store and it might be some time before a store employee from floral gets around to bringing it up front and unwrapping it for display and sale (we leave the carts and pick them up next trip). So if we used a more re-usable wrapping material, we’d lose them left and right. Or the driver would have to remove it and return it to the nursery, and the plants would sit inside receiving with no protection from the cold.

If there’s a way to recycle stretch wrap, let me know. My town refuses to take the stuff, and they recycle just about everything, so I guess the recycling companies can’t re-sell it (maybe due to possible contamination from soil, chemicals, etc.?).

Clem

My sympathies go out to you guys in the North East.3’ of snow with another foot on the way.Been there, done that, got the snow boots to prove it. Makes life ugly.