When the management at North Creek Nurseries, Greenhouse Grower’s 2016 Operation Of The Year, made plans to replace 18 hoop houses with a new greenhouse, they envisioned a facility that would make employees’ lives easier, while saving on labor and increasing productivity. The state-of-the-art facility that sits on North Creek’s Landenberg, PA, location does not disappoint. The greenhouse consolidates 54,720 square feet of growing space into an energy-efficient production area. In 2010, the staff at North Creek challenged itself to learn lean flow practices and implement them into its workflow. The centralized workspace and innovative greenhouse technologies incorporated in the new greenhouse design reflect the company’s commitment to helping employees effortlessly transition from one production task to the next with greater efficiency.
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North Creek Nurseries’ 54,720-square-foot, gutter-connected greenhouse is designed and engineered around the concept of continous flow.
Photo courtesy of North Creek Nurseries.
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Visser Horti Systems irrigation booms installed throughout the greenhouse integrate with the Damatex system for climate control. They are also fully functional separate from the environmental controls. Each boom has 250 zone possibilities on each side.
Image courtesy of North Creek Nurseries.
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The Bouldin & Lawson Pro-sticking line at North Creek Nurseries increases the productivity of in-line sticking with a variable-speed planting conveyor and quick adjustment to different tray sizes. It is capable of running up to 11 trays per minute. A line tray dropper inserts a new tray at the beginning of the line as a finished tray comes off the end.
Image courtesy of North Creek Nurseries.
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A BioTherm high-efficiency hydronic heating system warms the new facility, with 13 miles of in-floor tubing distributing heat evenly below the plants. The greenhouse has an insulated, 5-inch slab of concrete throughout, surrounded by a 24-inch transition panel buried 12 inches below grade for a quick response. Sixty-eight percent of the heat load is in the floor.
Photo by Janeen Wright.
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An automated Damatex control system handles the lighting, heating, cooling, irrigation, humidity control, and much more in the North Creek greenhouse.
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It includes a battery back-up, two disc drives, and two processors, along with a G4 hotspot and two digital lines.
Images courtesy of North Creek Nurseries.
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The AgriNomix Trimming machine at North Creek’s facility has a blower that lifts the foliage during trimming. A vacuum system suctions out debris and clipping waste then deposits them in a mesh bag for easy disposal. Trimming efficiencies have increased greatly while the possibility for hand-trimming related, repetitive-motion injuries have been eliminated.
Image courtesy of North Creek Nurseries.
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The propagation room includes a restaurant-grade refrigerator for seed vernalization and stratification, and a Blackmore turbo seeder, which can sow 300-plus trays per hour. The Blackmore unit is a reciprocating needle-type seeder with positive mechanical tray indexing, color-coded needle sizes, and drop-tube bottoms (small, medium, and large sizes) for centering seeds.
Photo by Janeen Wright.
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AgriNomix Grow-n-Go racks provide benching in the new greenhouse. Employees move trays from space to space with ease and less injuries. The trays stack on top of each other for storage and transport. A funnel system on the ends of the trays’ support posts makes it easier for a forklift to stack them.
Image courtesy of North Creek Nurseries.