Equipment improves efficiency, production

Faster filler
Thorsen Greenhouse in Delaware, Ohio, started this year with a new Maxi Flat Filler from Bouldin & Lawson. Doug Thorsen said the need to fill and plant multiple large containers at one time was the reason for the equipment purchase. Thorsen, who has seen an increase in sales to Costco, was looking for a flat filler that accommodated larger containers at a faster rate. The previous pot filler used by the grower filled one pot at a time and was not as fast.

“When we bought the old pot filler we were planting garden mums outside and doing about 1,500 12- or 14-inch pots in an 8-hour day,” Thorsen said. “We wanted to be able to do 2,500 pots in a day. It actually worked out with the new flat filler that we can do 2,800 pots a day.”

Thorsen is also scheduled to receive an order of about 150 Wellmaster shipping carts this coming spring. Costco requires that plants be shipped on carts. Thorsen also ships plants to garden center customers on carts.

Prior to ordering the new carts, Thorsen took inventory of the company’s carts, which he said hadn’t been done in two years. He discovered that 28-30 of 420 carts had gone missing.

“I was actually surprised how high the number was until I had dinner with a group of growers at the OFA Short Course and brought up the issue of lost carts,” he said. “Most of the growers said they lose about 5 percent of their carts annually and that number is kind of an industry average. After that I didn’t feel as bad.”

Thorsen said he has no plans to install any type of tracking system such as RFID to locate the carts.

Thorsen has 140,000 square feet of greenhouse production and 7 acres of outdoor production. Thorsen said the outdoor production area is completely filled with hanging baskets in the spring and garden mums in the fall. The area is also used for some miscellaneous pot plants during the summer. Thorsen said he has been doing the majority of the production outdoors for nine years.

“All of the outdoor production is on drip tubes. We have no overhead irrigation,” he said. “We start our hanging baskets in the greenhouse and move them outside, depending on the weather, in mid-April. We have nothing for outdoor frost protection. One year we lost everything outdoors. The plants that we move outdoors, like petunias, can take colder temperatures. We feel these cold-tolerant plants can survive overnight temperatures of 22°F.”

For more: Thorsen’s Greenhouse, (740) 363-5069; www.thorsensgreenhouse.com

Increased sticking
Dickman Farms in Auburn, N.Y., added a third cutting sticking line this year. The Rapid Automated Systems line is used for the sticking of unrooted cuttings of geraniums, perennials and specialty garden crops. The grower is a Ball Seed Gold Supplier of specialty garden plants. Jim Dickman said the new line also offers the company the flexibility of being able to plant up finished spring plants.

“The third line generally starts running in week 50 and continues through week 22 planting finished product at the end,” he said. “During the summer we usually run the line from week 26 through 30 planting perennials on it.”

Although the grower purchased an automatic transplanter for flat production, it saw very limited use.

“We have a lot of employees sticking cuttings,” he said. “They stick cuttings three days of the week and do hand transplanting of flats on the other days. We went about three years without ever turning the transplanter on.”
The company has added a new sticking line about every five years.

“Adding the sticking line has as much to do with volume as it does with the different trays that change over time with dibblers and adjustments,” Hickman said. “When we get into the heat of the season we set up one line to do 102 trays, one to do 105 trays and one to do geraniums. Sometimes we are not running all three concurrently, we just move some people around and that saves us whole lot of readjusting the lines.”

Dickman said that his company’s cutting business is now larger than its finished plant business.

“We’re probably 60 percent cuttings, 40 percent finished right now in regards to total gross sales,” he said.

The company has 400,000 square feet of heated indoor space, 2 acres of cold frames and 5 acres of outdoor space for perennials and garden mums. 

For more: Dickman farms, (315) 253-3030; www.dickmanfarms.com.