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The Challenges and Cost of Holding Trees for Mid to Late Season Planting

1. Custom growing – Sit down with your suppliers and set up a program where every season a certain number of trees are available for you. The contractor will probably be responsible for ensuring all costs of the product is paid for every year and will take all risks associated with this. Once the trees are of marketable sizes, they become the owner of the contractor. This will help to ensure contractors receive the best priced trees and will have access to product however, they will assume the risk as the product is being grown in the fields and market risk as what is required this year isn’t always wanted the next season.

quality product and have it ready for their contractors. Many of these operations may allow for customers to tag their product for up to 30 days, however, they also state that they will do everything they can but cannot guarantee these tags won’t be removed on the sold items. After a max of 30 days, the items return to inventory.

If trying to find product during the summer months starts to become more and more difficult for contractors, there are some other options available:

2. Holding yards – anyone can build a holding yard as long as you have the land, water access, equipment to maintain the dug product, keep trees standing straight, weed/pest/disease control and the ability to keep it healthy and viable throughout all weather conditions. Trees can then be purchased and received in the spring to ensure no one else can access this product.

The above options for contractors will help to reduce your tree costs and will also ensure you have product for future jobs, however, it also increases your risks as now you are holding product at your own cost rather than the cost of the grower. All business is based upon turning risk into capital. The more perceived risk you take on, the higher chances

As tree shortages begin to be felt across the industry, the best thing a contractor can do is ensure they are communicating well between the growers/suppliers and the end users. Long time, reliable customers will very likely be treated differently than new and unknown clients. This is nothing new or unreasonable until you get to know each other. Have you had a conversation with your nursery supplier(s) about how they will be handling holding charges on product in this upcoming season? Good business relationships are very important and go a long way in working together for a successful result for everybody concerned.

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