Leading up to Memorial Day weekend is our busiest planting week across all clients and projects.  The weekend follows shortly after our frost-free date, which results in a buildup in the greenhouse followed by a mass clearing out by early June. The following photos show the progression of our greenhouse over the past few weeks leading up to this week and how quickly things change. I will follow up this post in early June to show the much altered state.

 

GREENHOUSE SPACE:

We order in about 5,000 perennials and 15,000 – 20,000 annuals plants for the start of the session for our own use, we are not a nursery that is open to the public. We start in February potting and organizing the greenhouse and continue for the remainder of the spring monitoring until the plants are loaded for client projects. We store these items between two greenhouses and one perennial pad. We also have dedicated space for larger shrubs and trees which is more real-time inventory system.  The photos below show our greenhouse spaces between April 20 – May 18.

 

IN THE GREENHOUSE, APRIL 20. 

This is the interior of our main greenhouse which houses are delicate perennials/succulent collection over the winter and our collection of annuals for the season. We use as much space as we can with overhead drip lines watering hanging annuals. It should be noted that we don’t use the hanging baskets as hanging baskets, rather we will take the entire 10″ basket and plant it in the ground for maximum impact.  By this date, we have been growing the annuals for 1.5 months. We plan that we will house the plants for 8-10 weeks from plug to install. 

 

 

 

By this point we have moved our perennials out to the pad area.  This compact location gives us easy watering, access and ability to cover should we need during frost etc while freeing up greenhouse space for the more delicate plants.

 

We have a second greenhouse that we use primarily to house more delicate perennials.

 

IN THE GREENHOUSE APRIL 27. 

We have reached our 2 month mark for annuals and we had a fairly mild spring with warm days and a few cold snaps. You can tell the

 

 

 

I love the graphic patterns in the placement of the plants on the tables.

Below you can see how the drip lines are feeding our hanging annuals. These plants will be going into the ground, not continue as hanging baskets. This method provides us with larger plants at installation compared to a traditional flat size.

 

You can see the growth on the perennial pads and the additional of a few more plants from the perennial greenhouse.

 

 

 

This is a look at the perennial greenhouse looking from the other direction. We use use rice haul (the light brown surrounding a few of the plants) on a few of the perennials to keep the weeds down to a minimum.

 

 

IN THE GREENHOUSE MAY 18. 

By this point we had just started planting our annuals in the ground and the organization of the greenhouse gets distributed by the constant pulling for projects. The annuals in the hanging baskets are much bigger than back on April 27 and will make instant impact when planted in ground compared to traditional flats.  I took fewer photos this week, mainly because it started getting chaotic.

 

Here are a client’s window baskets planted and ready to load for install. We use the end of the greenhouse for easy staging, potting and loading.

 

By this point the center isle of the perennial greenhouse is getting tighter and tighter.