After the meetup with my brother on Friday, we drove to a relative's greenhouse farm to pick up some seedlings that we pre-ordered last month. Although this was our second time ordering (the first ones were delivered to us), we had not been there before so my cousin sent us a video of the route and notable landmarks that we were to follow so we wouldn't get lost. And so our journey began.
After some 20 minutes or so driving from the main highway, we finally reached a very quiet neighborhood. I was so excited and after meeting Mr. P, the greenhouse's caretaker, and asking if we could take a look around while waiting for the owners, I went on to explore the place.
The farm specializes in growing cabbage seedlings and while they just started around last year, it's a continuous and thriving business. It takes about 25 days to a month from sowing the seeds to being ready for replanting. I would say the return on investment (ROI) is quite fast. Except greenhouse construction is pretty costly.
This smaller greenhouse is very lengthy with hundreds of pallets and accordingly, contained about 1,500 trays or approximately 192k seedlings. It has been installed with sprinklers which when turned on, evenly water everything therein.
It was a hot day so you can imagine it's also very hot inside the structure.
The other one is a lot larger. It houses 3,500 trays or almost half a million seedlings. All cabbage and Chinese cabbage seedlings are ready for replanting and we were one of the first groups to take our orders so the greenhouses are still filled with them.
Some pallets in the middle are empty and I learned that they started sowing seeds again on Saturday.
They use compost soil in each tray that they used to buy from others but according to Mr. P, they are doing their own compost now and these are just some of it. While there, we learned that they wash the trays after each round before they start filling them again with soil and sowing new seedlings in them.
Anyhow, the owners arrived and the workers started packing our orders. My husband and my brother went in to help, while Ahjay and I stayed out feeling pretty, lol!
I was impressed at how fast they worked in taking out the seedlings from the trays and piling them up into the crates. The husband's orders plus my brother's emptied the whole stretch on the right side but were not enough they also took some in the second rows.
After the packing and being loaded, we were invited to lunch where we met some fur babies. There were 5 in the household if I'm not mistaken but Maria is the friendliest of them. She loved being made to dance, lol!
We spent some time looking around the place. It's peaceful there and the views are quite amazing too.
The visit was an enlightening and learning experience too. The owners have plans to make the greenhouses even more sustainable in the future and will adopt best practices like using organic and environmentally friendly stuff. That won't be the first and last, we will be visiting again, very soon!
Thank you for coming along on this wee adventure of ours and this is my participation in this month's Garden Journal challenge.
All photos are my own. 05102023/10:30ph
