Nursery sustainability can be enlarged by improving the production and effectiveness by proper nursery designing and maximizing equability in production. You can find many methods and tools to empower plant nursery, we are going to cover some of them that could be very helpful.
Specialize in a crop type
A successful strategy that is very common in increasing production effectiveness by focusing in a crop type. For more information on every type there is, click here. Many plants in a crop type are having a similar fertilizer, pesticide, water, and substrate needs.
Limit container size
Another solution for improving productioneffectivenessis to grow plants in a number of containers that have limited sizes and are using only one substrate. If you focus on up to four container sizes and one substrate, growers will be able to adjust productivity and management to establish plant growth. A lot of different ways of production could be optimized including productivity bench size,potting machines,irrigation schedules, pruning mechanization, and any other handling options.
Grow pest-resistant crops
Now nurseries can grow just pest-tolerant and pest-resistant plants, having the low cost in pest management. Breeding efforts and research had identified many types and cultivars which are less harmful to pesticides than ordinary grown “standard” types or species. For example, we have shrub roses, which can resist black spots, crape myrtles which are resistant to powdery mildew, Cercospora leaf spot, Indian Hawthorn resistant to Entomosporium. Project Plants Trade Centre has the best information you can get for plants nurseries.
Access inside greenhouse
On a bigger scale, to design a nursery, growers should use several techniques to enlargeeffectiveness or adapt topography to minimalize environmental affects or influence productivity. You can find some nurseries where cold frames are designed to have apaththrough the middle of every house large enough to fit a small tractor. Even if the area of production is reduced, this type of adjustment decreases time that plants need to be carried when getting orders, with this adjustments, costs are reduced.
Utilize area topography
Productivity beds for some nurseries have been put on a steep area and the growing is using microclimates down and up the slope for affecting finishing time by having the plants at the bottom to be sold later because of cooler air. Nursery can now grow types of plant material having the tender plants placed at the top of the slope draining cool air away and having the plats that require cold at the bottom.
Pack shipments in field
Even when shipping, adjustments can be implemented to assure bettereffectiveness. For some growers, workers are packing on the field,which is improving uniformity, it reduces the “pull” time for orders,and so as reducing the work needed for packing and pulling.
Use standardized boxes
Growers also canoptimize shipping boxes in standard sizes, which are adapted from the fowl industry. Use of a mass-produced and boxes in standard sizes are reducing per unit cost of boxes by more than 60% also, streamlines the shipping process.
Ellepot system
Besidesthat initial costs can be high, new technology is offering many solutions to improve productivity effectiveness. Reducing the labor cost is the goal of new technologies and by adopting these technologies is continuing to increase as work costs are increasing. From the start of the production period, potting machines have been developed to reduce the labor costs, potting process is quicker, and the uniformity of containers is increased. A different type of this is the Ellepot system that optimizes wool fiber to encapsulate peat in a propagation tray cell. This allows for automated filling of trays, and after, fast sorting of liners before shipping in the production cycle.
Real-time soil moisture sensors
Real-time soil moisture sensors are promising difference in irrigation. Drop soil moisture levels can be detected by this technology,and secure full automatization of irrigation control, which will result in lower labor costs while reducing irrigation volume as much as 70%. To get some more knowledge how the mechanics work, click here.
Automated boom misting system
One more system that is design to increase irrigationeffectiveness, and uniformity while reducing work costs in propagation environments is boom misting systems. There are many types of misting systems, to fully understanding how the technology behind it works, click here. This technology utilizes a leaf wetness sensor to determine when plants need to be irrigated and are fully automated.
Cart and conveyor systems
Cart and conveyor systems can be used in the process of pulling orders and assembling shipments to speed up the order assembly while reducing worker fatigue. Workers will be much happier and production will rise.
With choices ranging from potting machines to pot moving robots, as the cost of labor increases and the availability of labor decreases, the incentive for nursery producers to adopt methods and technologies that improve production efficiency and sustainability will only grow.