Fuel increases hit the soil industry

In the insult-added-to-injury department, the hard times have hit rock bottom: Dirt is dirt-cheap no more.

Fuel increases hit the soil industry with a triple whammy, as business owners such as Scott McCaughey of Topsoil Inc. cope with customer delivery, equipment processing and the mound-to-mound hop scotching that no one sees.

Next comes the cost of fertilizer, which he said had more than doubled this year.

"Our delivery costs are up, this whole business is based on fuel," he said. "It involves big equipment, and, of course, the price of big equipment is fuel."

All told, he figured his handling costs were up about 15 percent to $25 per ton, making him long for the days late last century of 52.9-cents-per-gallon diesel.

"People don't understand the overhead, the hydraulics. It's all oil-related."

The operation goes something like this: After buying a few tons of dirt from a freshly blacktopped mall site, McCaughey said he has had to shuttle the load around more times than customers might imagine.

"I move it about 12 times by the time you get it," he said. "I take it out, push it in a pile on a job site, load it on a truck, bring it to the plant, run the discs over it."

The discs spin-mix the dirt with lime and fertilizer before it goes to a shredding pile, where fine mulch bits are mixed in.

Wendy Dunlap, operations assistant at Diamond Mulch in Hampton, Pa., said producing Diamond's premium topsoil involves screening out the tree roots, rocks and other junk, then taking steps to minimize the amount of clay.

People might understand the transportation costs, she said, but as McCaughey said, not so much the fuel costs related to production. The diesel that powers the front-end bulldozers, earthmovers and dump trucks make the hop scotching and screening expensive but necessary.

Asked how much Diamond's costs had gone up, she said "a good 20 percent, maybe even more, because we get it at both ends."

Another aspect of rising costs is the popularity of container gardens and timesaving but expensive nurturing of gardens, shrubs and trees.

Penn State University's Patrick Drohan, a soil specialist who has worked on The Smithsonian's ongoing "Dig It: The Secrets of Soil" exhibit, said that despite the hard times, weekend gardeners have been willing to pay a premium.

"People want a quick fix for their garden," he said.

Drohan, an agronomist with the crops and soil sciences department, prefers doing things the old-fashioned way, which means taking a full season or two to make compost. "I personally did over 1,000 square feet in my yard," he said.

"We just mix clay, sand and peat and amend it," he added. "What you're paying for is convenience, this Miracle-Gro in the bag." He figured the homegrown soil in his yard cost about $225, a third of what the Home Depot route would have cost.

Drohan doesn't take offense at people who use the words soil and dirt interchangeably, described by some purists as being the difference between what's found under your feet and what's stuck beneath your toenails.

But Bob LaGasse, executive director of the Mulch and Soil Council in Manassas, Va., said connoisseurs know that boutique soil with nutrient-laced additives is worth it.

"The premium soil products are what consumers are demanding," the industry group leader said.

Container gardening has mushroomed in recent years, he said, to the point where half of all households have container gardens.

"There's dirt, and then there's soil," he said. "What we're selling are replacement soils because the natural soils have been removed and they left you with dirt."

"What we're trying to provide is a medium so that you don't kill your $50 plant with a 5-cent hole."

David Guo can be reached at dguo(at)post-gazette.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com