Hurricane Irma,
As we start gearing up for fall tradeshow season. Most of the tradeshow plant rental companies such as ours, are starting to buy plants and line up the tractor trailers to transport them. On this day, the 7th of September there is a huge hurricane approaching south Florida, we need to pray for the growers, especially the ones around the Homestead area.
With 185 mile per hour winds approaching with Irma we know the mess it can leave. Last time the Homestead are got hit with a cat5 storm was Hurricane Andrew in 1992 which completely leveled ALL the nurseries down there. If the storm stays on track we might not be seeing plants from southern Florida for 6-8 months for the shorter material.
UPDATE:
IRMA came around Florida but still did much damage to the nurseries in the Homestead area and throughout Florida, very little of the southern portions were spared. The problem are these plants are grown in “shade houses” which are basically poles with shade cloth on it. so the wind comes and blows these structures over and the plants which are fine start to burn from the sun. These rental plants are grown in shade so they are used to low levels of light so they will not fall apart or shed during the rental period. Strangely enough some of the nurseries are fine, they lost no shade houses and the nursery next to them within 1/8 of a mile were completely knocked down. So whoever had product that was not hurt are selling out fast it’s going to be between 3-8 months till we can get all the rental plants we need.
ANDREW
