(My apologies to fans of Castle for stealing the title for this post)
After a couple of years of mild summers, this one is about to cook us. If you live in the south then you know what I’m talking about. It’s been in the mid-90’s or hotter every day for the last month. There was one cloudy day that may be been like 90 but it was really humid so that doesn’t count. The heat index has been over 100 degrees for most of that time as well.
I’ve got to brag on my crew. They have plowed on through the heat without complaining (to me anyway). I’m sure they’ve had some choice words about the heat and their jobs, but everyone can get cranky when it’s 102 degrees.
The mums are looking good and the early varieties should have started their bud initiation by now. With this heat, we will almost definitely see some heat delay in the bloom development of the mums. The early varieties will be affected the most and if it doesn’t cool off, we will see it in the mid and late varieties as well. This means that there will probably be at least a 1-2 week delay in when the buds on the mums start cracking open. My best estimate is that the earliest we will have some cracking color will be closer to September 20. I hope I’m wrong.
We started planting our poinsettias and the first of our fall annuals last week which included calibrachoa and wave baskets and some annuals for our fall combo pots. The first batch of pansies arrived Friday and will be planted this week.
In the office, we are finishing up our sales analysis of spring and will be having a big meeting to go over the numbers. In addition to spring 2011 scheduling, I am working on a talk for the Arkansas Green Industry Days in Fayetteville, AR on September 1-2. I posted some information on this in my previous post. I will be presenting a short talk on how companies can get started in social media. In the mean time here are some links to our social media sites:
Facebook – we use our Facebook page primarily for our retail garden center customers. If you are one of our wholesale customers, you are more than welcome to Like our page and follow what we have going on there, but I will not be posting any information related to the wholesale side of things. http://www.facebook.com/ParksBrothers
Flikr – we use Flikr to post picture galleries of our plants for everyone to look at. Most of the pictures posted are ones that have been posted here on a blog post but not all. http://www.flickr.com/photos/parksbrothers
Twitter – we use our Twitter account to communicate with our wholesale customers. Every time I update this blog, a Tweet is posted on Twitter with a link to the new post. In addition to that I post comments, updates and pictures of what’s happening around the farm. Also when I go on trips to trade shows or to visit customers, I post pictures and information that I learn. In addition to all of that, I also keep in contact with other green industry professions who also use Twitter. http://twitter.com/ParksBrothers
YouTube – we use YouTube to host our videos that we post on our news and blog feeds and on Facebook. I haven’t done many videos this year because I broke my leg in March and am still on crutches. https://www.youtube.com/pbfarm
This is how we use social media around here. If you have accounts with any of these sites, we would love for you to “Friend”, “Follow” or “Like” us.