Photos courtesy of Bill Swanekamp

Producing about 100 million plugs every year, Kube-Pak in Allentown, New Jersey, adopted automation early to transplant plugs faster and reduce the headache of finding and training new labor.

In 1999, TTA USA made a 64-gripper transplanter specifically for the plug, rooted cutting and finished plant producer, says Kube-Pak General Manager and President Bill Swanekamp.

“We had probably 25 to 30 people manually transplanting — so, again, this is going back 20 years,” he says. “And it’s expensive, there’s a lot of management issues with people and we wanted to get away from that.”

Over the years, TTA USA’s technologies have continued to aid Kube-Pak’s operations.

This December, Kube-Pak will receive TTA USA’s PackPlanter Split-Frame Wireless 48 Gripper. It’s an upgrade — transplanters are faster now and the market has changed. Kube-Pak used to transplant 1,200 flats per hour. Now the business has significantly reduced its number of transplanted flats at 30,000 per week.

“Part of what has changed is that the demand for bedding plant flats has gone down and the demand for five-inch has gone up,” Swanekamp says. “So we don’t need as big of a machine now as we used to.”

Kube-Pak still does some hand-transplanting but has cut out about 90% of it. It has also automated about 70% of its plug-fixing with TTA USA’s CombiFix Gen II that it bought in 2018.

The plug-fixer works for growers who sell plugs, Swanekamp says, adding that Kube-Pak is one of about 10 major plug producers in the United States.

“We bought [plug-fixer] because we were having such difficulty getting labor to fix the plug trays,” Swanekamp says. “So that’s the main reason we got it. And the second reason is it has cut our expenses for fixing.”

Swanekamp, who calls the plug-fixer an “impressive piece of engineering,” says it has a two-step process to fix plugs significantly faster than even well-trained human labor could.

In the first step, the plug-fixer uses an infrared camera to map a plug tray to determine whether the tray has plants in it or just soil. It also uses jets to blow soil out of cells where there is no plant.

In the next step, the plug-fixer tells the user how many donor trays — which have plants in all their cells — he or she will need to do the fixing.

“Then there are these grippers that come down and take a good plant out of the donor tray and put it into the good tray,” Swanekamp says. “And then all the cells that were blown out are now refilled with good plants.”

After 20 years, Swanekamp says TTA USA continues to be a great vendor to do business with.

“They have good service, good equipment [and are] very reliable,” he says.

Photos courtesy of Alan Waller

When Battlefield Farms got its start in 1990, it was a hydroponic plastic range of 6.5 acres. Now, it’s the largest greenhouse operation in Old Dominion, growing and selling numerous crops for spring and fall, as well as holidays from Easter to Christmas.

Some of Battlefield’s success is attributed in part to its partnership with plant brand Proven Winners, says Alan Waller, director of sales and marketing at the greenhouse.

Between products like Supertunia Bordeaux, Bandana Lemon Zest and Superbells Holy Moly!, Proven Winners selects quality genetics for its offerings, he says.

Waller has been with Battlefield for seven years. When he arrived, he says, the company already had an established relationship with Proven Winners.

“It’s gotten bigger as we’ve seen success with sell-throughs and seen success with growing the crops and finishing the crops,” he says.

Waller says Proven Winners is a top brand at retail because the company’s brand is well-recognized and offers high performance products for consumers.

“We live in such a P.O.S.-based world that we’ve got to be very sensitive to what our customers are seeing — and not just our customers, but our customers’ customers,” he says. “As they’ve had success, we’ve continued to grow.”

Waller adds that when Proven Winners names a National Plant of the Year, it does well at Battlefield. For instance, Lemon Coral Sedum was Proven Winners’ 2019 Annual of the Year, and it sold well.

Proven Winners sells a strong portfolio of crops in both its Grande program and finished product, Waller says. “A lot of the growth we’ve seen, not surprisingly, has been in specifically their cali programs and their Supertunias,” he says. “A lot of the varieties that they offer are very unique.”

Waller applauds Proven Winners’ consumer research, which he says is strong because the company grows and sells much of its own product.

“I think they have a good understanding of what’s going on in the marketplace, [whether] being from a genera standpoint or even a color palette,” he says. “They are very willing to share their successes. They give us traction to new ideas because they want you to be successful.”

Photo courtesy of Diane Blazek

In 2019, the National Garden Bureau launched the ‘Year of’ video contest to curate a collection of videos to help the horticulture industry better promote a given plant. This year, the focus of the contest was snapdragons. In late July, NBG announced its first slate of contest winners. The Lee College Horticulture Program at the Ellis Unit in Huntsville, Texas, took first place for its video that focused on teaching viewers interesting facts about snapdragons. An animated short finished in second place and a video highlighting the value of gardening finished third. All videos are available to view for free at ngb.org.

Here, NGB Executive Director Diane Blazek discusses the video contest, the connecting quality of the videos and what growers can learn from consumers.

Greenhouse Management: How do you and the rest of your organization feel the first video contest went?

Diane Blazek: I think the average consumer got a lot more involved than the industry did. It’s an opportunity sitting out there that they can take advantage of, but now they can take advantage of the winning videos and use those in any way because what we are trying to do is raise more awareness and enthusiasm over snapdragons. We did announce this in the spring — a really busy time for growers and retailers — whereas the end consumers were ready for it.

GM: Do you feel like there is a connecting quality between the three top finishers in this contest that separated them from the rest?

DB: It was pretty obvious that people went in several different directions and emotions — which is great. One was very emotional, as it was about a mother and her son who used to plant snapdragons. There was the humorous video, which was the first-place winner because we were like, ‘Wow, putting humor in this made this education via humor,’ and we loved that. And there’s the last one, which gets children involved. We all talk about that all the time — we need to get the children involved, so we thought that one really pulled in a different demographic [than the others].

We are talking about, but haven’t decided yet, to make next year’s contest have three first-place winners and divvy them up into categories because it came through loud and clear in the submissions we got that people were using one of those categories.

GM: What is something growers could learn about marketing and spreading the value of plants from consumers who are already doing that?

DB: I think on our end, our social media community is nearing 100,000 right now. I think we’ve learned a ton from them through the comments and questions people post when we post something.

In some ways, you can have both ends of the spectrum. They could know literally nothing, or we underestimate their knowledge. I think our industry could learn by looking at our social media pages, observe and learn from the questions being posed on social media.

We have not decided on what crop type to feature next year. We may decide to do two contests next year, we may let people choose or may just do the annual every year. But this was a successful launch to the program.

Minimum wages are increasing. In 2018, 20 states and Washington, D.C., increased minimum wages and again in 2019, 20 states and Washington, D.C., have increased minimum wages as of this publishing. With labor being about half the cost of production, growers should pay particular attention to where labor input can be reduced. Here are a few tips that may help.

Pallet handling equipment is necessary. Most of the materials that are delivered to greenhouses come on pallets. This increases efficiency in handling and reduces breakage. Pallet trucks, lift trucks and fork lifts are designed for this purpose. A tailgate height dock may be necessary with some equipment. Consider the purchase of used equipment to reduce the initial cost.

Design your facility for efficient materials and plant movement. Reduce unnecessary transport, combine different tasks into one transport if possible and transport through the shortest route. In developing a layout, decide whether the receiving and shipping should be separate or in the same location.

Carts are the backbone in the greenhouse industry for moving plants. All sizes of greenhouse operations can benefit from carts. They increase labor efficiency by allowing one person to move more material at one time than they could when carried by hand. They also reduce fatigue. Select a cart that can be handled by one person, has variable shelf spacing and can be towed. The 22-inch-wide cart is convenient as it holds the standard flat and fits into narrow aisles in the greenhouse.

With labor being about half the cost of production, growers should pay particular attention to where labor input can be reduced.

Provide easy paved access. Provide concrete walkways to handle the volume of materials moved. Aisles should be paved and at least 8 inches wide for equipment movement. Doors should be wide enough for cart or forklift operation. Elevation differences can be connected by ramps with a slope of 1:12 for easy movement.

Add a hydraulic tailgate or pony forklift to delivery trucks to speed loading and unloading. Side entry trucks and trailers allow easy access to pallets.

Mechanize jobs that are repetitive, tedious or time-consuming. Frequently, these are the easiest to mechanize and result in a significant reduction in labor. Examples are watering, flat filling, transplanting and plant spacing. Manual and automated equipment is available to fit all sizes of operations.

Select equipment that will pace workers. Conveyor belts work well for potting, transplanting and packaging, providing uniformity and consistency. A variable speed motor adjusts the belt speed for different operations.

Reduce the amount of walking that employees have to do. Walking adds considerable time to the cost of plants. An average time to pick up or set down a flat of plants is 1.5 seconds. Carrying or walking can be figured at 4 feet/second. At a $12/hr labor rate, making a round trip 10 inches away to place a flat of plants on a bench adds 3 cents to its cost. Walking to the far end of a 100-inch greenhouse costs $0.18.

Purchase a plant inventory control system. Available in “Mom and Pop operation” models to multi-acre size, they can provide updated information on number and variety of plants, size of plant and container, greenhouse or bay location and price. Uploaded to a handheld scanner or computer, this information can then be used to maintain inventory, sales and billing records. It also helps to determine seasonal production and customer needs.

Standardize your operations. Keep the number and types of containers that are used to a minimum to reduce inventory and the time needed to make changes to equipment. Where possible ship in standard units such as carts or pallets. This simplifies loading and invoicing.