new new-range pictures

As promised, I have updated our greenhouse construction project. Unfortunately at time of posting, these pictures are outdated. This weekend I plan on getting some more snapshots. In my spare time......






looking south in the new header house













looking south-west in the new range









looking west in house 7&8











looking north-east at house 10 sidewall and gable











looking north east from the letter blocks

house 7-10

These houses (#7-10) are where we do our winter grafting work. I feel the new range will be a real advantage for the new grafts. Especially with uniform temperatures, we can really dictate the final outcome!!

And yes, I had the joy of partaking in the tear-down of the old hoop-houses! House 7 was the most interesting to work on. Check out the "framework" in the 3rd picture!




looking south east

the tall gutter-house (house 7) is being saved

house 8,9,10 in the background







looking north east

from house 10 to house 7








inside house 7 looking west











inside the header-house looking south

( note house 2,3,4,5,6 are staying)









looking north from where house 10 was,
towards house 7










looking north in the header-house













I will definitely add new pictures real soon, seeing as the main construction of the new range is nearly done! All that's left as of today is basically the interior.

Grass Leaves?.......

I think not! There's a reason they're called BLADES!!!

Our big push at work right now is shipping a nice assortment of ornamental grasses. As much as I enjoy the looks of these different beasts, handling them is a different story all together! The serration on the outside of the leaves is so fine, the blades will always win. Instead of just nicks on my hands and arms, it's cuts IN scrapes IN nicks.

On another note, we have started to get some of our crops into assigned houses for winter. The more we can have finished ahead of time the better, seeing as there is still lots to go. There's not much going on in prop right now, so I've been keeping busy with the rest of it all!!

'till next time, ('cause you'll never know when that will be)

Pete!

still shipping.....

..... to the main farm, that is! We have finished shipping out all of our grafts and whips for tree standards. Now it's time for our liners. Hundreds of 'em. Thousands of 'em! Most trays are 50 packs, with a few 36's for certain plants. These liners are for one gallon production. Boxwood, cedar, spruce, euonymus, spirea, potentilla, hydrangea, and so on. So far I believe we have shipped 7 tractor trailers over. We should be all done by Wednesday. We hope! 'Cause when it's all over there, WE don't have to worry about it!!!!

Propagation

Now at work I am referred to as "Propagation Pete". In the prop group, that is. I guess I am technically assistant propagator Pete, alongside Lindsay the other assistant and our fearless leader, Propagator Paul.

June 25th was really my first day. So far my tasks have been sticking cuttings, moving cuttings, and prepping plants for potting. We root a lot of our own plants, for our home farm, as well as the Main farm. This means that if the other farm is ready for planting, we have to prep all the cuttings, put them on racks, and send them over to the other farm. This coming week we will be sending over all of the grafts that we grafted this past winter to main farm. A few 53' trailers and all the grafted under stock will be there. Then our flowering shrub cuttings will be next. It looks like I keep moving into the faster paced parts of the nursery, even as the pace picks up! What a rush! Fortunately my Spanglish is also improving!

Driver Sales

I guess you do learn something new every day. Today I learned that in our area of Niagara region, nurseries are starting to try out "driver sales". This whole idea is not new to me, I used to do driver sales into New York State. Namely Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse. The idea behind it is simple. Load your truck full with flowers (or perennials) and drive from door to door and sell your plants. I have experience with cut flower sales, not potted perennials. Today our company is getting ready to try this out. We are trying to do the "buy this whole cart of plants and receive a discount" approach. On my end in the nursery, I had to help set up the whole cart display. I was given some plant suggestions to pull from the nursery, but the final say was mine. I could change to whatever plant I thought would be the nicest. We brought some patio planters over from the main farm as well, but most of the product was our own 2 gallon and 1 gallon plants. Tomorrow morning, 2 co-workers and myself have to finish it up. Tagging and such is all that needs to be done. The straight truck that we have can fit 14 carts. Each cart has 2 layers of one gallon 6-packs, (8 six packs per layer = 42 pots) and either 2 layers of patio pots, or 1 layer of 2 gallon plants.After all is said and done, I have to admit the carts look great. Not only my own opinion, but co-workers as well. We will see on Monday how the first run works out, and if it's all good, we keep on doing it!!

back on earth

Well, no, I didn't fall from the face of the earth, just crazy busy.

We are near the end of our busiest shipping days. Kind of. In a couple of weeks, most of the perennials we planted this spring will be ready to ship. At least we will have some students in to help. As much as possible, the Hombres (Mexicans) have been doing nursery work. This entails things like: pruning what needs it, spacing what needs it, condensing other blocks that have been decimated by shipping, moving to free up more houses, and of course potting new crops.

I have also been promoted to Assistant Propagator. A new challenge is always welcome for me, as this means more hands-on experience. I have done other propagation in greenhouses, (geranium, chrysanthemum, poinsettia etc.) but never in the nursery. Yet. I will now get to learn perennial, flowering shrub, and hard-wood/softwood rooting and maintenance. And of course grafting in the winter. Coincidentally I seem to have worked up the ladder in an odd fashion. Things seem to have gotten lighter! First I was on the Main Farm, shipping and learning nursery work. (the smallest pot-size was a one gallon, all the way up to a twenty five gallon container.) Mid-summer I was transferred to the Home Farm where I am now. Most of our containers are one gallon, but no more than a three gallon, ornamental grasses in a five gallon excepted. Now I will be handling trays of 18 pack, and jiffy trays.




I will post new pictures soon.
Till next time, cause you never know when that may be!




(pictures added June 12'07)

Shipping, shipping, shipping.......

What a couple of weeks this has been. Each day has been run, run, run, with little time for anything but work. I was fortunate enough to have my wife and kids stop by work for lunch the other day. What a treat that was. It was raining, so a little sunshine mid-day sure helps. The puddles were a sure magnet for the kids, how can they all be avoided? At least we finish at 5:00 on Fridays and 3:00 on Saturdays.

There hasn't been a day that I've been home before 9:00. (Friday and Saturday excepted) Not bad so far. There will be more nights that I won't be home until 12:00. It's all part of spring shipping. Our Mexican co-workers are doing great as shippers. Some better than others, but overall it is going great.


There are so many things to watch for:

proper plants/ varieties
proper picture tags and or pre pricing
pot size
plant maturity: older crop or fresh potted
shipped on carts, racks, skids, or wooden racks

We also have our own pot-washing station. Almost all of our product goes through a conveyor system where it is pot-washed and six-packed or pre priced. I will post about that at another time!

Picture Comparisons

A visual comparison one month can make.
On the left are pictures from March 9'07, and on the right side from April 8'07. As much tagging as possible is finished, and regular crop maintenance is whats left, besides shipping, of course.

The top left picture is from house 29 looking west, and the top right picture is from the same house from the west looking east.

The bottom two pictures of one gallon vines show a drastic improvement of plant size and maturity. You can also see the new growth in the grasses overhead. The last picture is a nice double white Clematis.

Another Week

Every day of every week is different.

This past week, we started out with a fair amount of shipping. Enough that we could help train the Mexicans how to pull orders. Fortunately they know a minimum amount of English, and we know as much Spanish. We all seem to manage quite well.

Since our weather turned sour late in the week, shipping has halted. We can not ship product that is just starting to send out soft new growth, when temps are below freezing. Most product is pulled from poly houses in the nursery, and were starting to flush new growth. By the time we had our wagons full of orders and into the yard, we had frost damage on more sensitive vines.

We are currently going over the nursery from one end to the other, cleaning off dead leaves, pruning back as needed, spacing, culling for dead pots, weeding and any other crop maintenance we can do right now. As soon as the weather cooperates, we will be into some serious shipping to make up for lost time!

As soon as I can get my camera batteries charged, I will add new pictures for comparison from here to here.

Another Week

This week at work was a nice warm up of things to come. A little bit of shipping, planting, pruning, spacing and tagging.

Our last crew of Mexicans landed Wednesday morning early, and started work on Friday. We are now at decent staff, so efficiency is up. For instance, on Monday, we would plant 1 gallon pots until our wagons were full.(just over 200 pots per wagon) With four sets of three wagons and tractors. Once the wagons were full, we would take them out to the nursery. Now with a full crew, we only stop for breaks. There is enough people to unload as fast as we can plant so it is a very smooth rotation.

We also shipped out about three 53' trailers throughout the week. Next week looks to be picking up already, with one trailer for sure so far on Monday. I've heard sales look good for this year, so we will be re-planting as fast as we can ship.


I'm just happy I live close enough to work that I can see my family at lunch! It may be the only time for the next while, except for family day Sunday!

Fresh Pictures

I took a few snapshots today while doing pick-ups with my brother. He is pushing more potted plants than he has working for my other brother. There is a huge selection of potted plants from local greenhouses, and his clientele are very happy. They love their fresh Canadian product, cut flowers and potted. Just think, delivered straight from the greenhouses to their door, in sometimes less than 24 hours. Now THAT'S FRESH!













Pictures from top left to right:

6" Pink Hydrangea
Hydroponic Tulips (Different from here)
Asiatic Lilies for cut flowers
6" Blue Hydrangea
4.5" Gerbera
6" Cyclamen






I plan on talking to each of the growers from these greenhouses as well as others, so I can post more details about each.

March Break

What a shock when I arrived to work on Monday. I knew to expect some students for the break, but there must have been 50 or 60 of 'em! Or so it seemed. Well, at least 35. Most are local 8th and 9th grade students, some with no previous experience. .
Since November, there hasn't been more than 20 people at the farm, not including sales and office staff.

We have already finished a lot of different things, from tagging in the nursery, to planting in the Big House. We finished as many tags as we had, our new tags will be coming in soon. My knees feel like I borrowed them from an 80 year old. All tagging is done on the ground. All day Monday and Tuesday. Fortunately, we may step on the pots, as all the plants are dormant right now, and the soil is frozen so we won't do much crushing with our feet.
The propagation crew is busy with transplanting, although I am not entirely sure what is all on their agenda. My own work keeps me running as it is, and I can't see getting too much valuable information from any of the kids. I'll learn more of the prop end after the majority of the shipping is finished. Probably in September!

On Thursday our first four Amigos arrive to our farm, with the option to start work right away, or get all settled in during the weekend. If I know any of them from last year, they will jump right in. The next group is to arrive the following week.

They have bumped our hours from 8:00-4:00 Mon-Thurs, 8:00 - 12:00 Fri during the winter, to 8:00-4:30 this week, and next week 8:00-5:00. Slowly but surely, the spring rush is upon us. It won't be long before we will be working 7:30- the last truck is loaded.(could be midnight)

I'm not sure how often I will be able to post, but you can rest assured I will keep updating as the farm lets me. I plan on posting "staged" pictures, to show the nursery throughout the year. This should be fun!!

Ahhh, Spring!

Here are some pictures from the "Big House".

Nursery Update

Grafting is finished for the time being. Just 200 to do this coming week, or as soon as we get the scion wood.

We are also filling our greenhouse (the "BigHouse") with all kinds of goodies. From one gallon staked vines on the floor, (some currently with a few flowers) to 2 gallon ornamental grasses suspended with hanging basket hooks, 3 high, to 38 pack Vinca "Darts Blue" on other floors. Its starting to feel like spring.

A couple of days ago, we all headed to the main farm to receive a tractor trailer of B&B shrubs. (Magnolias, Viburnum, etc.) What a workout! We have a pretty good core of guys, so it was a smooth 2 hour job.

Our days at work are going to consistently get longer, starting next week. Before you know it, right after March break, we will be getting into very heavy shipping. Whatever the weather. We have to ship to a lot of garden centers and bigger retailers for their spring rush.

This is also when we are getting in our off-shore labour. It's nice to know it's the same guys as last year. It's fun to learn from another culture. We all work together, so we all get along. This is also going to be the first year that we have the Mexicans help more with shipping. Of course the propagation guys will still be on prop, and the production and potting crew will still be refilling the farm!

Apparently, we will be doing some moving some of our cold frames, narrow a few driveways, and build a couple of new cold frames. In our spare time. I guess that's after the shipping rush. It seems the home farm doesn't have quite enough room yet,so we are squeezing out ever square foot.

I'll add some pictures soon.

IPM Course

This past Friday I was scheduled to have an IPM course with two co-workers. Surprise, OMAFRA rescheduled.
Earlier.
Wednesday.
It was originally to be greenhouse and nursery combined, but one of the teachers couldn't make it. It was now a greenhouse course. I found out in short order that it was indeed another refresher course for me. I had this course before, working in a different greenhouse.

IPM: Integrated Pest Management

"A philosophy/strategy of pest control that integrates all available tactics to reduce pest populations to an acceptable level in cost-effective, environmentally rational manner"

It is always nice to have refresher courses, it helps keep things mentally fresh. Now I have First Aid renewed and IPM rehashed. Hopefully I will be sent for a Pesticide Safety Re-Certification next. Mine just recently expired.

I Passed

I am now a First Aider. It is now my obligation to help those in need. Hopefully I won't need to practice what I have been re-taught. ( one question wrong on each of the two tests. Not bad!) I am just thankful I have a clue what to do in case of emergency.

Cool Tulip Tour

This morning I went on a great greenhouse tour. Basically on the Dunville/ Wainfleet border, is a cool greenhouse. Nothing like I have ever seen before. In our area, that is hard to come by. I've been in all sorts of greenhouses, either working or touring, and this was definitely new to me.

In Holland over the past years, they have been working on hydroponically growing bulb plants. Apparently, there are only three or four hydroponic tulip growers in Canada. I received a phone call the other night by one of the few operations. We set up an appointment so I could have a tour of the operation. The least I can do is walk away with more knowledge as well as really cool pictures.

The owner walked me through the whole process, from importing the
bulbs, to final shipped product. He has a lot of automation as well, mainly for bunching and packing the final product.

Bulbs come in from Holland, and are stored at a cool enough temp to
keep the bulbs dormant. When they are ready for planting, the bulbs are brought out of the cooler and put on a hopper. The hopper is raised, and the bulbs are gravity fed onto a short conveyor belt. Staff then take the bulbs and set them in crates that are lined with pins. There is a water reservoir built into the tray, so when the bulbs start to push
out roots, they have an ample supply of food.

After the bulbs are planted, they are put back into another cooler until they are ready for forcing in the greenhouse. They are warmed up slightly, to ensure good rooting in cold storage. The rooted plants are now ready to grow. Since they are such a short crop, and not grown during insect season (summer) pesticides are rarely if ever used. This makes for an even more enjoyable atmosphere. And clean throughout.


All the floors are concrete, so disinfecting over the summer is a cinch. Concrete floors also let all excess water out through holes drilled at 1 foot spacings into under drainage. Irrigations in the greenhouse are done by boom sprayer in the growing area, until the plants are moved into the harvesting area. Then it is done by hand. The grower will try to top up the plants before moving over to reduce the amount of hand- watering.

Harvesting is also fast paced. A few criteria must be followed: bloom maturity and stem length are the two key factors. I had the opportunity to talk to some staff for a couple of seconds, then realized I was being a hindrance. He needed another cart to pick into. After harvesting, the tulips, bulbs and all are brought over to the packing line. Two people place the tulips onto a conveyor. They are swept down the line through different stations as they go.

1. placed on the line by 2 people
2. bulbs are cut off by machine, waste is augured into a bin (minimal clean-up)
3. four people pick up the prepped stems and align 10 blooms to the same height
4. bunches are set back onto the next belt, where they are tied together by machine, and bottoms are trimmed to ensure uniform length within each bunch
5. two people sleeve the bunches, and are tied once more to help keep the stems together, as well as to hold the sleeve in place
6. ten bunches of tulips are set into a pail, and off they go. 100 stems per pail.
7. pails may or may not be boxed, dependant on where they are going
   

Space is always maxed out, there isn't any money in empty square footage! I am hoping that the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words" will help fill in any blanks, but feel free to ask questions. I'll reply to comments ASAP.

Cut Tulips

Last night I received an odd phone call.

Hold on, lets back it up a little bit.

A couple of weeks ago, we were on a three week layoff at the nursery. I helped my one brother with his truck in the evenings, but most of my time was in the greenhouse.

While I was doing assorted greenhouse jobs, (painting pipes, installing benches, etc.) I ran into another tradesman. Case. He is a professional shading installer straight out of Holland. We got to talking, and we got along great. I told him of my various experience in the flora culture industry, and he told me of his experience in the shady side of it.

Last night I found out that his wife works about 20 minutes away from here, in a greenhouse that produces cut tulips. It turns out, Case told his wife about me, and she in turn talked with her boss. He is looking for a grower. He called me. Tomorrow I have an interview with him just to see what is all involved. I told him right off the bat that I am happy where I currently am, but if the money and incentives are right...

That is all I can really say for now, but be assured, I will post about the results tomorrow. I also plan on taking some pictures. I have never seen a hydroponic tulip farm before! C has her own take on this story. I guess it really does matter what you know, not only who.

Wish me luck!!!!

First Aid Training

This morning I started my 2 day training of First Aid.
The nursery that I work for sent myself and a coworker to maintain enough trained staff in the nursery in case of emergency. (I like to think it's in our best interest, however, I am not sure I would want some {any} of my co-workers to apply CPR on me!!)

Our class started at 8:30 and ran until 4:00. We had a 15 minute break at 9:45.
Lunch time from 11:45 until 12:45.
Break at 2:45.
From 3:00 on, a written test (multiple choice) on what we have learned so far.
If memory serves me right, we left at 3:25.

There were a total of 16 people in my class, and of course some catch on quicker than others. It makes for a longish day. Our instructor is great, though, and has lots of personal experience stories. These people really do save lives.


Today we covered the basics.

• Emergency Scene Management
• Shock
• Choking (Adult)
• Cardiovascular Disease
• Severe Bleeding
• Medical Conditions and
• Wound Care

There is a lot to learn, and I know I won't be a doctor, but I feel better about knowing the first steps. I was even commenting to C a few weeks ago that I would like a refresher course. At least this one was paid for!