| HRT 210: Nursery Management - Fall 2006 |
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Instructor: Tom Fernandez A216 Plant & Soil Sciences Building Michigan State University Department of Horticulture Phone: 517/355-5191 x 1336 Email: fernan15@msu.edu |
HRT 210 Nursery Management Lab Project - Fall 2006
Your team will be responsible for marketing, growing, and selling nursery stock as well as keeping records on production costs (how long it took to accomplish operations, cost of materials, etc), pest (weeds, insects, diseases), management challenges, problems and solutions, and profit/loss. You may set up your nursery using any business structure discussed in class. Your clients will be Brad Rowe (A212 PSSB) of Sasquatch Gardens, a high-end independent retail garden center; Bert Cregg (A214 PSSB) of Home Despot, Inc, a large mass merchandising chain; and Bridget Behe (A238 PSSB) of Forever Green Landscaping LLC, a mid-sized residential and small commercial landscape design/installation firm.
Your grade will be based on what you have learned and expressed in the reports and the quality of your nursery and plants. Five points of your lab grade will be assigned by your nursery partners based on fulfillment of your duties as a team member.
YOU CAN BE FIRED FROM A NURSERY! If you are not fulfilling your job responsibilities and appropriate steps have been taken by your nursery’s management in consultation with me, you can be fired and you will not earn at least 5 points (equivalent to half a grade point of your final grade) from this project but probably more. Any reports that are turned in while you are unemployed will result in a grade of 0 for you for that report. If you are fired, you can apply to work at other nurseries but they will probably be overstaffed and not have any positions open.
Whether your nursery turns a profit is unimportant although a huge loss will need to be explained. It is much more important to keep accurate records of your costs so that you can learn what operations are most costly and where improvements can be made.
Reports and Due Dates
All reports should include the names of all nursery members. They are due at the beginning of class on the following dates (LATE ASSIGNMENTS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED):
September 12- Draft of catalog, goals and objectives, nursery organization, job descriptions.
September 26- draft cost of production spreadsheet, final catalog, report on sales contacts, type of business entity and appropriate form (Articles of Incorporation, etc). (5 points)
October 19- Updated cost of production spreadsheet, update on sales contacts. (5 points)
November 21- Final cost of production spreadsheet, catalog and sales report, profit/loss statement, a description of the successes and failures of your nursery and how you would correct the failures. (5 points)
November 21- Each nursery member will evaluate the other team members (0 to 5 points and reasons for points earned) based on their job descriptions and turn these in to me separately, your evaluations will be kept confidential.
Your costs will be:
- Pest Control- you have a contract with Kilz All Pest Management to apply pest control at your recommendation for $40/hour which includes labor, standard chemical costs and equipment.
- Overhead- 110% of direct labor
- Containers- 1 gallon- $0.15; 3 gallon $0.49; 5 gallon $0.65
- Substrate- $1.85 per cu ft; Fertilizer- $37.00/50 lb
- B&B Harvest Supplies- Burlap squares- 1 bale of 250 squares for $87.65; 44 inch burlap socks- 25 socks for $180.25; Sisal twine- 10 pound balls for $10.18 each; 44 inch wire tree baskets- 25 for $194.50; Shipping charge- $24 for each nursery.
- Labor- you decide what team members should be paid but pay rates must reflect responsibilities. Wage per hour must be multiplied by 1.7 to account for taxes, unemployment premiums, workers comp, etc. You can have 2 wage scales for managers, a higher wage for management responsibilities and a lower wage for manual labor.
- Catalog- $0.25/page black and white; $1.00/ page color. Minimum order 25 catalogs.
All cost of production spreadsheets should be extrapolated to 1 year.
We will be applying a preemergent herbicide to all container plants 2 to 4 weeks following planting. Please make sure that all of your plants are weed free by then. Preemergent herbicides do not work on established weeds, only on weed seeds and very young seedlings.
Figuring costs for substrate and fertilizer:
There are 27 cubic feet per cubic yard (commonly referred to as just yard) and substrate for wholesale nurseries is sold by the yard. You need to convert cost per cubic foot to yards (1 yard = 1/27 cubic feet so multiply the cubic ft cost by 27 to get the cost per yard). Then you need to determine how many yards it takes to fill different size pots. As you saw, there were several sizes of containers even for what we were calling the same size (2 or 3 different sizes for 1 gallon, 2 gallon, 3 gallon, etc) but to simplify things we'll use the same container volume for each size category. The volume of the containers we will use for the calculations are 1 gallon = 208 cubic inches, 2 gallon = 350 cubic inches, 3 gallon = 700 cubic inches, and 5 gallon = 1,080 cubic inches. To determine how many yards you used here is an example for 1 gallon pots:
- Yards substrate used = (208 cubic inches per 1 gallon pot) / 46,656 cubic inches per yard
- Yards substrate used = .00446 yards 1 gallon pots
Figure out the cost of the substrate per yard and multiply by the number of yards used per pot to get the cost of the substrate per pot.
Fertilizer used = 1 ounce per 1 gallon, 2 ounces per 2 gallon, 4 ounces per 3 gallon and 6 ounces per 5 gallon. There are 16 ounces to the pound. Your fertilizer cost $37 for 50 pounds. Figure out how much that is per ounce and multiply by the ounces you applied per pot and you will know your fertilizer cost per pot size.
Lab 1 Instructions:
Prepare an order of ±600 plants from the following list with the sizes you want to grow and whether you plan to exclusively grow container plants or have a combination field/container nursery (you must have container production, field production is optional). You may grow plants in 1, 3 or 5 gallon containers or they may be field-grown. You will not receive all 600 plants, each nursery will grow 300 to 400 plants depending on how many members are in your nursery. Prioritize your order by indicating in the priority column with a 1, 2 or 3. Your order will be filled based on priority and plant availability.
Determine the clients you plan to sell to, you may chose to sell to a single client, 2 clients or all 3 clients.
Determine the organization of your nursery, create job descriptions and set preliminary goals and objectives. Some jobs will require much more labor than others. Be sure to assign enough people to each job. Also, you must evaluate your employees based on their job description, not on how much work they did versus how much someone else did. So it is important for you to create job responsibilities that share the work load appropriately.
Types of jobs you should consider:
Overall manager, multiple managers or management by committee- make sure goals and objectives of nursery are met, make sure assignments are prepared and turned in on time, make sure employees are fulfilling their job responsibilities, solving disputes, hiring and firing.
Accountant/Financial Manager- keep track of costs, prepare financial parts of reports, cost/sales analysis, profit/loss statement. This is often the most time consuming job and may be appropriate for more than one person.
Production supervisor- in charge of organizing all aspects of plant production (watering, pest monitoring, organizing work crews, etc.)
Sales and Marketing- developing catalog, contacting clients and selling plants (again may be appropriate for more than one person)
Manual labor- all nursery members will be involved in the manual labor. Those without specific jobs can be classified as manual labor and be expected to do more of the manual labor than others. However, at this time of year there will not be much manual labor.
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