We grow all our plants from seeds or cuttings. Our seeding machines place the correct number of seeds in each cell of a 288 plug tray. The first machine is our Hamilton Drum Seeder. It can seed a tray in only a few seconds. Our second seeder, KW Needle Seeder, is for odd shaped seeds like marigolds and zinnias. It uses needles to pick-up each seed and place in the cell. The speed of this machine is a snails pace compared to the drum seeder.

After seeding, we place all the trays in a germination chamber with 99% humidity and heating or cooling based on which season we are trying to manipulate. For us to have our plants ready for gardens in Spring we have to create Spring conditions in January. And for our Fall pansies we have to create Fall during the Summer. The chamber is large enough to hold over 450,000 seedlings each week.

Once the seedlings begin to germinate, they are moved to our seedhouse for growing.

The trays should look like the picture on the left. But if left in the chamber too long the seedlings begin to stretch and will become unsellable due to the poor quality. It’s art, luck, and experience to know just when to remove the seedlings.

Most of our cuttings are bought from specialty cutting growers here in the USA and from other locations around the world. It’s simply amazing to be able to get cuttings from locations thousands of miles away in great condition, but we can’t take a cutting on one side of our nursery and get it stuck before it wilts. Our own cuttings are taken from plants that are not widely available in the horticulture trade.

When the plants are ready to be transplanted to our finished containers we use our Flier Transplanter. This machine allows us to transplant more material with the same workforce as before by hand. First is our flat and pack dispenser followed by the soil filler.

Next the transplanter moves seedlings from plug trays to the finished flats. The flats are only as good as the plugs, therefore we must hand transplant replacements where seedlings are missing. The flats are tagged, watered, and placed on carts for unloading in the greenhouse.

In the greenhouse our plants are unloaded and grown to sell just before reaching prime condition.

Our greenhouses are all metal with double poly roofing. Some are natural vent and others use evaporative cooling.

Once the plants are ready for sale they leave our greenhouse one of two ways. Delivered to independent garden center in Alabama or shipped mail order direct to your gardens.