Spring cleaning tips for your commercial greenhouse operation

During every busy shipping season you invariably run into issues that would have been eliminated had a little spring cleaning taken place. The spring cleaning referred to here encompasses more than just a “cleaning” perspective, it also involves planning ahead and taking care of business concerns so they don’t interfere with the busy season.

Here are a few points you may want to consider before spring shipping rolls around:

Review your supply inventory
A good time to take stock of inventory is before the busy shipping period, there’s nothing worse than finding out you are short of shipping trays in the middle of a large order. Don’t confine your inventory to just shipping material, have a look at production material as well. The less concern around ordering material, the easier time you will have when the product is flying out the door.

Rotate time sensitive products
A system should always be in place to use older product first; from cardboard to growing mixes. Get your departments using a continuous rotation of material so not to be surprised when you have the least amount of time to deal with it. Growing mixes for example; generally have a shelf-life of 3 months, after that the wetting agent is less effective resulting in watering issues. Some operations color code their loads of growing mixes so the staff knows which to use up first. It also helps if you have a stringent ordering procedure so that you are never over or under-supplied with material. Putting these measures in place will ensure that you are not dealing with surprise issues when you can least afford it.

Read more tips at GGS (Duane Van Alstine)