Bad news at the gas pump and unprecedented raw materials costs will reverberate across the gardening industry shortly. Aside from the obvious cost of fuel to deliver products to distributors and to stores, skyrocketing fuel and raw materials costs will make many gardening items from mulch to fertilizer more expensive than ever before.
Watch for fertilizer costs to nearly double next season. It will not matter whether you are purchasing organic or chemical products, costs will be going up a lot!
Other items including mulch (transportation costs), bird seed (grain prices and transportation), and tools (manufacturing and transportation) will all be rising dramatically.
Anticipating this as the 2008 season winds down could help savy gardeners deal with the higher costs next year. Watch for clearance sales this year on consumable items like fertilizer, insecticides, mulch and other items. If your storage capacity and wallet can handle it, you probably will never see lower prices for these items. Buy only what you anticipate using in ONE season. Buying and storing more than that could lead to other problems. Always store products in a dry and secure place where moisture, pets and children can not access them.
Fall 2008 is also a good time to do plant maintenance to make sure that shrubs, trees and lawns get off to a good start next season. Pruning, fall fertilizing, and weed and insect control and prevention measures now will eliminate a slow start next season.
Local Master Gardener and Extension services will be focusing on "Economy Gardening" issues in their correspondence this year. Make use of these resources for other ideas to keep your gardening value oriented.
More information on this in later posts on this site...spread the news.
Seasoned Gardener
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