Our cuttings are looking good. Our highs have been around 100 degrees for the last four days so keeping them from getting too hot has been a challenge. Our automatic watering booms spray the cutting periodically to keep them hydrated and cool. I checked a few cuttings for roots but didn’t find any, but I only looked at 4 cuttings. Not a good representation of the 121,000 cuttings we stuck. Also the cuttings I chose to look at looked to be struggling a little probably because they did not have any roots. We’ve also been having periodic problems with the automation on the booms. Every so ofter one of them will stop working and have to be reset. We haven’t been able to figure out why so we have to watch the booms closely to make sure they keep working. Brown outs could be the cause. We have a lot of them around here especially in the summer when it gets hot and all the AC’s in the electrical grid kick on at the same time.
In addition to the poinsettias and the mums, we are working on replacing the plastic that was damaged in the hail storms in the spring. Today some of the guys are replacing the gutters in one house while they have the plastic. The rest of the crew is either working on stripping plastic on other houses to get ready to cover, drenching the mums with the iron or cleaning out houses and getting them ready to disinfect in preparation of the poinsettias.
In the office, our new sales person, Annette, is calling on last years poinsettia customers and getting their poinsettia orders for this year. Ron is out traveling in Oklahoma. Leigh Ann is in Nicaragua. Clay is working on product costing. Charley is alternating between the recliner and checking on the mums and crews. Beck is updating our MSDS information. Golden is reviewing our emergency plan and working on payroll, and I’m updating the blog, making collection calls, analyzing our cash flow, checking on the crews progress and working on next spring’s items.
Not too bad for one day.