At Little Prince of Oregon Nursery, a wholesale annuals/perennials grower in Aurora, Oregon, Mark Leichty works with several styles of greenhouses, including gutter connect, Quonset-style and peak-roofed structures. His preference is a GK Machine peak-roofed greenhouse, part of the Donald, Oregon, company’s 5000 series. And, fitting with Leichty’s philosophy, you can find several of the […]
Shippers must sift through layers of deception
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Shippers, brokers and carriers increasingly must be watchful for a fraudulent practice called ‘double brokering’
The problem of the root
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Growers, suppliers discourage tap roots and circling with pruning pots and grow bags.
Finding your flow
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Today’s technology can automate every aspect of irrigation, saving labor and water, but it comes with a price With irrigation controls at your fingertips and data on soil moisture levels and plant stress a click away, today’s nursery producer has more control over plant health than at any time in history. And with labor and […]
Stretched to the limit
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Extreme weather wreaks havoc on greenhouse poly film With 15 acres of greenhouses under his management, Jeremy Dewar at North American Plants in McMinnville, Oregon, replaces polyethylene (poly) film on a recurring basis. Lately, however, he is replacing it at a higher rate than usual. Like other greenhouse operations in Oregon, the greenhouses at North […]
A season of nightmares
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With low availability and higher driver and truck costs, shipping costs skyrocketed in 2022 For as long as Erica Hill can remember, Union Pacific railroad has provided the nursery industry with a special commodity rate to move stock during the spring shipping season. Until this year, that is. “With container availability issues and with the […]
Lean outdoor growers ferret out waste, boost profits
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Small margins and lengthy production timelines at nurseries mean that small changes implemented with Lean production techniques can add up to less waste and better margins — while better protecting workers.
‘A perfect storm of hurdles’
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Container vendors deal with supply chain, labor and raw materials issues, which in turn affects growers and retailers In her 14 years as hard goods buyer in the nursery industry, Cheryl Atwater has seen economic cycles come and go, plant trends peak and drop off and markets surge and decline. Never, however, has she experienced […]
Dealing with a known quantity
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Wholesale nurseries find personal service and relationships are still key for making the sale Many nurseries no longer input orders manually, in some cases saving hundreds of work hours monthly. Smartphones have become indispensable as nurseries snap photos of plants and shoot them across the country in a matter of seconds. And in response to […]
Getting the word out
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Growers take an interest in steering landscapers and end users to the right tree for the location No tree can grow best in the wrong place, and no location can be enhanced by the wrong tree. To that end, the flow of information between tree growers, and experts in the markets they serve, is critical […]