Horizontal Air Flow (HAF) fans and their sisters (HVF) High Velocity Fans are essential parts of a greenhouse heating and cooling system. HAF Fans and HVF Fans are also known as circulating fans.
Studies have clearly shown that sales increase when a plant is branded. There are many benefits for you and your customers in branding your plants, including increased recognition, value and repeat purchases. If you have a quality product line that you’re unsure about branding, here are some reasons to reconsider.
Many nursery growers grow and overwinter strictly in ground to ground hoop houses, but some progressive nursery growers over the last several years have been looking more and more to gutter connected poly greenhouses. Here are 7 reasons you may want to consider a gutter connected greenhouse for your next nursery expansion.
Maximizing lighting efficiency is a major concern for many growers who rely on supplemental lighting in their greenhouse. Here are some criteria to take into account when choosing and maintaining your lamps. The lighting you choose depends on many things like what developmental stage your plants will be grown to, whether the plants receive light from other radiation sources, and the photoperiod length per day for your plant.
How many greenhouse operations are concerned with energy savings? I will bet almost every one of them at one time or another! Energy costs are at the top of the grower’s expenses and yet there are many operations that do not spend enough time investigating how to lower their energy use.
If you could go back and re-design your existing greenhouse, how many changes would you make? How many of those changes would be minor ones and how many would involve major structural, heating or other mechanical changes? Avoiding this in your future expansion is easy; have a checklist of things you should have in your greenhouse now and incorporate them into the next build.
Growing hydroponically in a greenhouse is not a recent innovation but for some growers it represents a change from the comfort of growing in soil. If one was to poll greenhouse vegetable and flower growers you would find that the majority in fact are growing hydroponically, and those who are growing in soil are hesitant to change from what they are confident in.
Structure maintenance and planning involves more than just new construction projects and a focus on expansion. Often the best dollar value for a grower is in retrofitting and modernizing existing greenhouse structures.
Many years ago I was in the retail business managing a staff of 30 plus people. The grocery chain that I worked for had just been bought by a larger company and things were drastically changing. I had been considering a career change anyway and since I was still fairly young, I decided that it was time. Not knowing what direction I wanted my career to go I answered a newspaper ad for “Greenhouse Labourers”. I thought it would be a nice change while I sorted out my next career move...