A panel discussion on the topic of ‘Mechanization of Nursery Operations’ was held on 16 Jan, 2018, at Clayton in Gloucester County. The panel comprised of progressive nursery growers of NJ, who shared their experiences, observations and perspectives on mechanization of potting, pruning and spacing operations. This article focuses on potting.
Potting is one of the most labor and time intensive operation in the Nursery. According to Millville based propagation Nursery, ‘we were basically looking to save some labor, relocate some labor, save time, consolidate the time we were doing our process, have more consistency in our scheduling and in the actual product quality’. To achieve that they changed how they fed the machine to get the job done in time. They used the ‘same potting machine, however pulled everything along the machine’. It helped them take couple of people off of the line and relocate them in other tasks. They wanted to have potting done by 4th July and with new set up were able to achieve that. Most importantly now they ‘know that guys can do 10 wagons a day or 20 wagons a day instead of well today we are going to do five and tomorrow we are going to do fifteen’.
For a Bridgeton based container nursery with reputation of highly mechanized and automated operations, the ‘idea was to eliminate all wagons and people that would be using those wagons’. They did it by ‘taking a potting machine to the green house and using a mobile conveyor belts 1200 feet long that made a 600’ up and down giant loop’. That translated into potting 22,000 one-gallons and 16,000 two-gallons with the seven people in 8 hour day. The down side was the ‘lots of capital’ and ‘always had to make sure, machine is fast enough and nothing stops’. However, the return is also rewarding.
According to Central Jersey based grower and sales person, who has traveled extensively within and outside USA, the most efficient method of potting would be, ‘filled pots are laid in the green house, and then someone comes and drills every single pot, followed by somebody with, say a flats of 32 cells (plants) and put them in’. He noticed that in El Campo, Texas. He said, dumping the soil in a big hopper, then putting the soil into pots will not work for long and can become dinosaurs! ‘Bigger nurseries must think mechanization’.
