Greenhouse upgrades

Are you planning to do some improvements to your greenhouses this year? Here are some growers that are making changes to their facilities to improve production and/or efficiency.
 

High on Light
Pacific Plug & Liner has been operating a 250,000-square-foot facility in Watsonville, Calif., for 10 years. The young plant producer retrofitted an old cut rose range removing in-ground rose bushes and pouring concrete aisles and installing benches for propagation. The company has been reglazing the fiberglass greenhouse roofs with DEGLAS twin-wall acrylic and expanding its benching.
 
“Our houses are now 50 percent glass and 50 percent acrylic,” said Ryan Hall, new product development and marketing manager. “We reglazed 16,000 square feet and we’ve done a total of 48,000 square feet so far in acrylic.”
 
Hall said the difference between the old and new glazing is like “night and day”.
 
“Because the fiberglass was so dark, we used those production areas last,” he said. “Having good glazing on the houses is critical to taking advantage of the weather. We can run the houses cold and bright and it makes a really nice environment for holding plugs so we can maintain them and keep them looking good,” he said.
 
For more: Pacific Plug & Liner, (831) 722-5396; www.ppandl.com.

Production Consolidation
Lucas Greenhouses in Monroeville, N.J., is in the process of consolidating its production operations into one 50,000-square-foot building. Head grower Joe Moore Jr. said the new production barn being built is a modified Nexus greenhouse structure.
 
“It has some modifications in regards to truss widths and truss designs to have as few posts in it as possible,” Moore said. “The structure has been custom-designed for us. Our intention is to do all of our production out of this facility and to take it out of some of the other places that we are currently working.”
 
The structure will have insulated metal panels on the sidewalls and roof.

“We chose the greenhouse structure simply because of cost,” Moore said.    “We were able to put up the greenhouse for less than cost of a standard steel building with steel I-beams in it.”
 
Located on one side of the barn, which will be sealed off by a wall, will be a brand new soil mix line. The wall will keep growing media components and dust out of the production area.
 
The production area will be set up for transplant lines. Coolers will also be installed in the production area to hold cuttings. 
 
“We’re hoping to have everything set up and running by mid-fall and then I can begin tweaking it so I can get the mixes nailed down,” Moore said. “This will be our first attempt at using an inline soil mixing system. Everything up until this point has been premixed or batch mixing that we do ourselves.”
 
For more: Lucas Greenhouses, (856) 881-0234; www.lucasgreenhouses.com.

Continual improvement
Holtkamp Greenhouses in Nashville, Tenn., is in constant upgrade mode.
 
“Each year, we have an idea of what we want to accomplish to improve the greenhouse,” said vice president Reinhold Holtkamp Jr. “Then we allocate a certain percentage of money to go back into the business.”
 
The company’s most recent upgrades  have included adding three new JAVO potting machines, two labelers and integrated robotic plug and drop equipment.
 
Another improvement was transitioning the greenhouses old shade curtain system to Ludvig Svensson’s XLS Firebreak screens. This technology helps limit screen-to-screen spread in the event of a fire. Fans were also added and upgraded in the 500,000 square foot Venlo greenhouse.
 
Holtkamp’s primary crop is African violets, but the company also produces begonias, mini poinsettias, ferns, garden mums and gardenia and fern plugs. 
 
For more: Holtkamp Greenhouses, (615) 228-2683; www.holtkamp.com, www.optimara.com.