How To Grow MILLIONS of Plants a Year: Plant Nursery Tour

What's up everyone. Kevin from Epic Gardening here. I'm up here in San Jose, California actually, and I'm at a nursery that I thought was a small operation. It's actually really, really big. It is the nursery of Plants by Post, who as the name implies, they sell plants by post. They come to you in the mail. And so what we're going to do today is filming a lot of cool stuff and I'm just really excited because we get to show you now how your plants that you're buying at your big box stores or your retail stores actually get produced from seed all the way to the time that they ship out to you and also from cuttings all the way to the time that they ship out to you. You're going to see how the seeds are started. You're going to see how things are grown, how they're transplanted, how cuttings are made, like all of that stuff. So join along. So we're at where it all begins, which would be the seed ball and everything in here is stored at 46 degrees Fahrenheit, low humidity. You can see there's some differences in what you're probably used to with seeds. This is coated with a polymer because most of this stuff is going to be going through an automated seeder, which we're going to see in a second. And if you have irregularities in the way that your seeds are structured, when you're putting it through something automated at this scale where they're doing 80 million plugs a year, which is a crazy amount, you can't really do that by hand. It's, you've got to automate it. So you have to do stuff like this. So let's go ahead and check the seeder out. So we're here at the seeder now, which is I'm extremely jealous of because this would make my life really easy in the garden. And you can see you have the dipper right here. And it's just gently depressing these trays, which there's 288 plugs per tray. And right here, you can see why the seed needs to be uniform because you have the drum that's picking up individual seed and just sowing it straight through. And then as we come down here, we get to this section, which is not being used right now, but sometimes they'll put differing levels of vermiculite on top because you need to hold moisture for different types of seeds. Some seeds are thicker coated than others. It takes more time for the water to break through. Start the germination process. And then when you get to here, which is probably my favorite part, is the automated watering. It just perfectly waters all of these twice down the row. And then they just go over there. They're picked up and they're moved right over there into the germination chambers where they're stored at pretty high humidity, 95%. And they're stored up there anywhere from one to five days because as we know, all seeds take different amounts of time to germinate, lots of different variables in seed starting. So really cool system. Wish I had one at my house, but I probably don't have the 200 plus thousand dollars it costs. But anyways, really cool. We're going to go into the plug tray section now. It's pretty moist in here. I gotta be honest with you. So it's, like I said, it's 95% humidity. I'm wearing this jacket. I probably can't stay in here for long, but you can see hundreds upon hundreds of seed trays starting here in the dark, in high humidity, perfect conditions for almost any seed. So what happens is, like I said, they stay in here one to five days. Eventually they're going to go right out there to the plugs and that's where we're heading next on the journey of the plants that you buy at the store. Look at this guys. It's pretty crazy. So this is where everything comes once it's germinated. And if you're getting close on these, you can see just hundreds upon hundreds of tiny little seedlings. And it's so efficient at this scale. I mean, I'm sowing stuff in a 72 cell flat, perhaps even less, 24 cell, 288 per times thousands of trays. So there's just millions of plants here. So again, we're here in the plug house. There's a lot going on here. You can see right here, there are cyclamen. So this is a very sensitive plant. It's one that's taken them five years to learn how to master really growing it at this scale. So you can see cyclamen here. There's cyclamen over there under reemay. And it's actually really interesting. The reason why that's under reemay is because they need the humidity to be really high because you know, when you start like a bean seed or something like that and the seed hull will stay on the leaf and kind of mess the leaf up, they noticed that that was happening with their cyclamen. So what they did is they put it under reemay cloth, keep that humidity really high. So the seed hole is moist enough that when the plant grows, it will actually fall off more naturally as compared to maybe just leaving it off and then it would harden and they would get too much loss. But what's actually behind me right now is the water boom. So this is how they water at scale. They can also apply fertilizers. They can do any sort of pest and fungal control that they want. And it's just a really efficient way. And what's crazy is they're able to water a million cyclamen. So from here, from down there all the way over to here, and of course over here as well, a bunch of different species, but we're standing around millions and millions of plants that are going to go all around the country to nurseries, greenhouses, et cetera, everywhere, which is just really cool to see how they start from such a small size. So we just came from the transplanting room over there and now these right here, which are vinca, they're in here cause it's the warmest area are basically in their final stage before they go ahead and get sold off. Right? So if we take a look, you can see these have been transplanted maybe a week ago or so. So they're getting their, their legs are getting established. And then once they're done, they actually look like this. They start growing up, they start throwing some flowers out and then eventually these are the ones that will make it out to the nursery that you guys will go buy them at. So similar process here because they've got the water boom way down there, comes through, they're growing them on tables, better airflow, no pooling, not on the ground. And it's just a really, really efficient way to grow a ton of vinca. So we're going to check out some other stuff now. So at a nursery of this scale, you might be wondering, okay, well, how do they actually create all of the soil that you see in the hundreds of trays, thousands of trays, pots, et cetera. So right here, taller than me, it might be eight foot tall. It's a bale of peat moss. So you can see peat moss from Canada. It's been compressed, I think to about 135 cubic feet. And then it's going to go into this machine right here. So let's walk over here. It's called the Bale Buster. It does what the name implies. It explodes it up, it fluffs it up to about 270 cubic feet. It's actually running right now. So you can hear it and it's going to be coming up through here and then it's getting mixed. So it's getting amended with different things. You have your fir bark right here. You have perlite. There's a light fertilizer that's also mixed in. And as it comes down this line, we'll run down this way. You can see you have your fertilizer here. It'll actually come in here. You can see soil coming down the line. And then what happens with it afterwards is it comes over here and it will make it up there into the transplant room, which is where we're going next. So we're here in the transplanting room and you can see the soil mix is coming up here. We're filling up trays in there. And then as we come down the line here, you're going to see something really cool. Something that honestly, I'm jealous of. You've got your mixture right here. And then as we go over here, you can actually see the transplanting process takes place and they run this almost all day. Check that out. Pretty crazy. And then as you come down here, you can see we're in the outdoor area of the nursery and this is where, you know, like when you're starting seeds at home and I've done videos on this in the past, when you're starting them in an indoor climate, you want to make sure that you harden them off so they're ready to go outdoors. But there's actually another twist here at a commercial nursery because most of us at home, we're growing for the season that we're in, in the climate that we're in. But a lot of these plants are going elsewhere. They're going to climates that are not this climate, right? We're here in San Jose. It's a much different climate than somewhere where this plant might be purchased. At the same time, there's also plants being grown out of the natural season because there's timing issues at play. So these will sometimes come out to harden out. Sometimes they can be transplanted and directly put out here. Sometimes they're grown in the greenhouses you just saw and then they're moved out here when the time is right, when the weather conditions are right, when the plant needs it. Uh, so we're just looking at some basil here, some super healthy roots. We've got no root binding, which is amazing. And I'm sure it probably tastes equally amazing too. So I'm going to eat some dirt, but that's okay. I mean, you can't beat it. It's absolutely delicious. And all of these hundreds of thousands are going to be going out to nurseries and big box stores around the country. We're back at a Plants by Post nursery, huge nursery. This is the cuttings or the vegetative propagation nursery. So we saw the seed one and this is actually really cool. So right now I'm going to show you, this is a really interesting sort of air pruning way of starting cuttings that helps the roots branch out instead of necessarily straight down. Also makes it a lot easier to pull out and pop and put into another system or pot it up. And this is the machine that actually creates these right here. So it's called the Ellipot. And so you can see you have a biodegradable paper coming through right here, spooling up and coming through just like this. Soil gets pushed in, it gets turned into this cylinder and then the cylinders, if you come over here, get chopped up like this. And then as they move over to this machine, they get placed in these trays just like this. And then at that point you have this tray ready and you can start sticking cuttings in it and actually doing some propagation. So after they have all their trays, their cuttings start coming in from actually all around the world. And you can see right here, we've got a geranium cutting that's just barely, barely started to root. And this is effectively how they would come in. And then they go into the Ellipot trays. They're in an area with really nice humidity, really high temperature, because when you've got no roots on the plant, all of the moisture is coming in through the leaves, through the stomata on the leaves. And that's how the plant has to get established until it gets roots. And what you can see is really beautiful, nice roots, white roots that are coming out of all different areas. It's not getting root bound here at the bottom. And that's partially because of that Ellipot design where it's separating out from the tray, which we can see if you come in right here. It's kind of not smushed right up against the side of the plastic, which gives a little air barrier, which allows the roots to kind of get there. But then as soon as they get there, they'll air prune themselves out and they won't develop much further. But it's a nice branching out. And so once these start to really set root and develop, then they start to get hardened off. They move into a different greenhouse with a little lower humidity, a little lower temperature because you don't want to baby them too much. You've got to get them ready for where they're eventually going to be, which is going to be, you know, at a nursery in your house. So you've got to get them all hardened off. Same as you would do with a vegetable seedling that you're starting, you know, before spring indoors and then you're moving it outdoors. So we just came from the more humid, the darker and the hotter greenhouse. And you can see right here, this is a lantana that is certainly a little bit more bushy as far as the roots go. But what you'll notice here also is that they've pruned the main stem off to promote bushiness. So you can see these new two shoots coming out. It's very similar to that video I did a long time ago on how to prune basil where you're just taking off the top growth to promote that bushiness. And so this is kind of what starts to happen. You're letting it grow up, you're letting it start to harden off with a little bit lower temperature, a little bit lower humidity. Now that these roots are here to actually provide the plant with what roots are supposed to provide a plant with and they're starting to start doing some plant training techniques, pruning it out, making it bush up to eventually go to what we're about to see. So we've got a Spanish lavender here that looks like pretty much a normal Spanish lavender plant. And what happens is it's going to go through this little pruning off process where it starts looking like this where you're just taking off all the side shoots. It starts to sort of pop out like that. Then it looks like this where you're really letting that go. And then eventually you end up with a really cool looking plant, kind of like a mini lavender tree, which looks amazing. It's going to be really good for the pollinators. I've got one of these not quite the tree size. I've got more of a lavender bush, but I mean it's a beautiful pollinator plant and really cool to see some of these pruning techniques turn it into a really unique plant product. So here we are in a field of geraniums. There's thousands probably, and they're just waiting for a little bit more color. So maybe a week or so to kind of color up and then they'll probably also make it out over there to the supermarket to get picked and packed and either to a door like yours or a nursery or a big box store. But they look really amazing. So just take a look at the color here. Geraniums are quickly becoming one of my favorite border plants in the edible garden too, for some of their pest prevention properties and just how easy they are to grow. So we are sitting here in front of an incredibly huge field of Gerbera daisies that are starting to finish off. So these are actually plants that are started from seed. We're at the Cuttings nursery right now, but these were started from seed transported from the other nursery over here because this is a really big greenhouse that it's great space to finish a plant off. And speaking of that, this is what they end up looking like about eight to 10 weeks after this phase. They look about like this. And you know, when you're shipping a plant out to a consumer, to you or I, you're not going to buy it at this phase. For the most part, when you're buying a flower, you want that pop of color. You want it to look really beautiful and nice. And so that's what we're seeing here with this Gerbera daisy. And as we look around here, there's just millions and millions of plants. The color in here is incredible and it's really cool to see even the greenhouse. You can see as they try to control the temperature, the roofs open up and there's just all sorts of environmental controls going on here. So very cool to see kind of how the sausage is made. So here we are in the supermarket, which is a really cool name. And you can see these begonias here look absolutely amazing. And let's just take a little walk around. So when plants are finished up, this is where they end up and they need to end up here because there's so much going on that all orders need to be consolidated in one spot so that people can come through and pick just like you would pick off of a grocery store. You know, you have your grocery shopping list. It's the same thing here at this scale. You know, you can see you've got some geraniums over here. Actually I have some of these in my house right now. They're amazing. But you know, orders come through, they pick, they pack and they go out the door over there. So here we are at the end of the line. This is the loading dock at Plants by Pose. I hope you guys really like this tour. There's so much more that we could have done here because it's a huge space. It's a crazy operation. It's really awesome to see how a plant that you buy in your nursery starts its life right here, grows up and actually gets out to you. So I hope you like this. Much more to come. If you like tours like this, let me know if there's anything else you'd like to see. But until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.