If you’ve been looking for Raleigh St. Augustine grass in the Houston area, you already know there’s a grass shortage. Houston Grass Owner Michael Romine explains why in this video. He also describes the steps he’s taking to be as fair as possible in selling his grass. Delivery is still available and other grass varieties are still available by pre-order.
Summary of Why the Grass Shortage in the Houston Area
The first thing I’d like to talk about today is the grass shortage. I just kind of want to put this out there because today there’s lots of things going on in this world. And we kind of hear the word “shortage” on a daily basis. Whether we’re talking about lumber or tires or chlorine tablets or toilet paper or any number of things these days, it seems like. But now it seems like we have to add grass to that long list. I’ll try to explain the grass shortage issue for you.
People call every day and wonder why there seems to be a grass shortage in the Houston area. They’re calling dozens of places and getting the same response from lots of people. They call places and people tell them that they either don’t have any grass, or it’s going to be days till they have grass or something like that. So I wanted to explain a little bit about what’s going on.
In a nutshell this particular shortage is due to the freeze that we had. Lots of farms, including ours, that were, were not in great shape going into spring with the inventory we had. Our grass inventory was ample to get by with normal demand.
Then when the freeze happened, it really knocked us back on our heels. Grass that was already very mature and ready to be cut was in decent shape. But the younger grass was particularly susceptible to those really cold days that we had. Grass that we were hoping would be ready about right now, got pushed back a lot. The more mature grass fared okay. But like I said, that younger grass that didn’t have a good protective canopy over it really took it on the nose. And that created what’s now a grass shortage in the Houston area.
Our farm has pulled us back every few weeks that goes by. They take inventory of where they are. And it seems like every other week or so I’m getting a phone call from the farm saying it’s going to be a little bit less next week. So that’s what has left us in this state of a grass shortage.
So when you call us or you call other places and you’re looking for grass and you’re wondering why nobody’s got it, that’s it in a nutshell. What that means here at Houston Grass is that currently we have taken a new approach to dealing with the shortage.
We’re trying to be as fair as we can be to everybody. So we’ve stopped taking pre-orders for Raleigh St. Augustine grass. We tell everybody approximately when the grass will be here at our office, and we sell it on a first-come first-serve basis.
We still do deliveries but our delivery schedule seems to stay packed. So we are usually several days out on deliveries. The way we’re selling most of our grass is everybody comes to our office in Arcola to pick it up. They usually come when the trucks are going to be here.
What’s been happening is people come before the trucks get here and sit in the parking lot and wait for the for the grass to show up. And that’s what we’ve been having to do.
I’ve been doing this for 17 years, and we are certainly in an uncharted territory. But if you have any questions, please feel free to give us a call at 281-431-7441. Phone lines are very busy as well, for the same reason. So that is kind of where we are these days.