The mums are coming along. The buds are swelling up and starting to crack. We will have color earlier than usual this year on the 6.5’s and 8’s but the 12’s look like they will bloom about normal. I did go with more earlier varieties in the 6.5’s and 8’s so that accounts for the fewer buds showing up in the 12’s. We are planting some #4 pansies this week along with some calibrachoas and a few other fall annuals. We are also finishing up pinching the first round of poinsettias this week.
Our first shipments are scheduled to ship next week, but I think that the customer may push that back a week to get more color. That hasn’t been worked out yet. As soon as I’m done with this post, I will go out and do a quick inventory to see exactly how many mums are shippable next week.
In the meantime, I have been trying to clean out, rearrange and paint my office. It was way overdue, and we are still not finished. Maybe by the end of the week.
A couple of weeks ago we put an add in the paper for some help. We were about to get behind and needed 2-3 more people. We hired 1 that started on a Friday and 2 that started Monday – 2 men and 1 woman. The woman didn’t come back on Tuesday and one of the guys missed 2 days the first week and quit on Friday. The first guy we hired is still with us, but I am not sure he will make it much longer.
So what’s the problem here? Do we need to reevaluate our hiring practices and come up with a better way to sift through the applicants to find the best? Is what we do such hard work that a lot of people just can’t handle it? Did the people we hired who said that the desperately needed a job lie to us? Maybe we just aren’t paying enough?
I know that part of the hiring problem is that some people can get a decent unemployment check right now. It may pay better to sit at home. For whatever reason, we needed help, and we really didn’t get it. We managed to get through the crunch with what we had left, but there is another crunch coming in a few weeks. Wonder what will happen then?
Last, here are some pics of some new pansy colors we will have this fall:
