hello friends welcome to gardening with creekside i am jenny and you can tell that
today we're in a bit of a slightly different location we are here at four star greenhouses
in michigan and what a treat it is so what we're gonna be focusing on today is kind of the
production side of the greenhouses this nursery is just on a whole nother level huge facilities
massive gorgeous plants amazing technology and automation in here so we got to have a little tour
through the greenhouses and i'm just going to hit the highlights right so you have been with
us through our greenhouse you've seen how we as a small family business do production on our scale
but this just takes it to a whole another level so i'm going to try to go through the different areas
of production and talk about them so the first thing that is obvious to me is the floor so
when you have greenhouses on this large of a scale and even will tell you as a home gardener the best
way to irrigate and to water your plants is not mainly from the top down it's from the bottom
up so that is what they do here and they have several different systems that they use so the one
that we're standing on now is actually a mat with different layers of it's got some gravel in there
it's got the irrigation lines in here you can see right now this is kind of just the top layer
and there are some some lines in it to keep everybody nice and straight this block has been
used they've moved these plants out of here but the water comes up from the bottom it waters the
plants and then it drains so that's one of these then what they have a lot of are what we would
i consider the plain concrete floors that just have these nice big massive holes throughout the
water bubbles up from the bottom it floods that block sits there for an appropriate amount of time
and then through those same drain holes that the water came up the water will then flow away it is
just a really cool system because you really want to water your plants from the bottom front instead
of the top to keep of course diseases and pests foliage dry so forth and so on so those i think
were the two main sources the mat and then just the concrete floor what's also really neat about
with the water that they use to irrigate they recycle their water so here you can actually see
the whole filtration system that happens when they are filtering their water you can look and see
where the machine is so once the water comes back down through the ground the floor it'll come
through this system the one that you can see where the dirt is kind of on on the metal is the first
layer so that gets out the big stuff right the big chunks then it'll work its way through and then
to the right of that there is a paper filter so it gets all out all of that fine material and then it
continues to get processed and then they can use it again so there is no waste here they're not
you know just chunking it out they're recycling their water for irrigation excellent very smart
now you will also notice here in this area of the production you can see what they're call
booms and so there's multiple ones in different locations this one of course is the closest to us
right here again this is all based off of computer programming and you will see that there are
nozzles um from the top this is where they're going to get most of their fertigation from so
fertigation is when you mix fertilizer with water so it's a half fertilizer half irrigation right um
but what's so cool is that the computer the system knows exactly that these are hydrangeas right here
so they need a certain kind of fertilizer but right here we have roses they need a totally
different kind of fertilizer and maybe at different points so based on the crop it
will fertilize appropriately for that and it is so smart that it knows that there are no plants right
here so these nozzles will not work so they're like there's no plant i'm not going to waste my
time energy or resources on that but you can see that they're all throughout here of course this
is all going to be both the irrigation and the fertilizer will be based on the crop so depending
if we have sprinter boxwoods the roses the hydrangeas all of that will be dependent on that
plant now what is really cool too is this system you want to talk about some amazing automation
oh my gosh you know that we joke at creekside we even have shirts made that say we're professional
plant movers they're professional plant movers here too but a little bit of a less
maybe a little bit less labor intensive so this fantastic machine are forks right so basically
what it does is it will come in and scoop up the pots so you've got pots in all of these rows
and then the operator can just easily with the controls move it wherever they want they can put
it on carts take it put it on the carts take it off the carts if they need to move them from here
they can move them from over there it is just the absolute coolest thing these are one gallon
shrubs here and approximately this will hold about a hundred shrubs so imagine the time that is saved
by using this machinery as opposed to having to hand do it and then of course they're all in nice
beautiful straight rows so this was a really fun thing to see now another really interesting um
this was fun because we've done hanging baskets with y'all a lot of times
up in this particular greenhouse this is what they call a fixed line meaning it doesn't move
so we have above us and these are the exact same drippers that we have at creekside so they have
the hooks so they can actually have two layers of hanging baskets so one one hanging baskets will
just hang on the purlin then there's a hook so then you have another layer just like what we did
in the new production greenhouses so you can get as many plants in here as you possibly can
then you'll recognize those drippers same ones that we have again all the water the fertigation
everything will go through there but in another greenhouse that we were in it i don't remember
the exact name it's basically a carousel right and so instead of being a fixed line this is a moving
line so it's on basically a little conveyor belt so those hanging baskets will move through and
then at the end of the greenhouse is where all the irrigation is now this was really cool so it will
know as the basket goes past it'll flip a little switch and it'll tell it that this basket's the
higher one or this basket's the lower one so depending on which little switch gets flipped
as it goes past the water just the top water will come on or the bottom water will come on
so it's so smart that it knows okay i only need to use spray on the top or on the next one okay i'm
spraying on the bottom or if there's no hanging basket there at all it won't spray anything at
all again automation is key when you have got just the enormity and the size of production
that they have here at four star but of course as always even if you have the best automation
in the world if you don't have fantastic employees then it's absolutely worthless and so
they were just talking about how they have such great loyal customers here at
4 star which as you know will make the all the difference in it doesn't matter what
kind of business you're in if you've got great loyal employees then it's wonderful
one other thing that is really neat here at 4 star is how they control their pest problem because
if you've gardened for more than a hot second you know that you're gonna deal with bugs and pests
on a massive scale like four star that is no different in fact it's probably even worse so this
is really interesting they use a ton of biological controls for their pests as opposed to using just
spraying chemicals over and over again so there's a couple of things here that i wanted to show you
one on the booms you'll notice they have these bright yellow cards those are sticky so for
whatever reason a lot of pests are attracted to the color yellow so they will fly up and then
because it's sticky they stick to it and then they can't get off so that is what's going on over here
now you'll notice that we have a white bucket here on the floor there were several down throughout
and different places where they are hung between kind of the the poles this is where the predatory
wasps are hatching and coming out so a predatory wasp we have used these at creekside before
they're not like the wasp like you should maybe traditionally think they're little tea
tiny little guys and what they do is they go after aphids so they will come out of the bucket and be
released out into the open they go find their food source and then they have a great munch on tons of
aphids and then other different pests in here so we've got the yellow sticky card we've got
the predatory wasp and then if you will notice on the ceiling there is a cloth so here in michigan
they too deal with japanese beetles so the cloth this whole greenhouse is basically enclosed even
though the air can come in and out but it has such a fine weave that pests cannot come in and out of
so this will keep the japanese beetles out of this area because if you deal with japanese beetles you
know how absolutely destructive they can be so that was a really neat thing that i personally
that i found because i didn't know that they dealt with japanese beetles here but yes so the whole
cloth on the roof on the sides everywhere keeps the beetles out so again being very smart being
very wise on how they control the pests in here using those biologicals and physical um barriers
to keep those guys out so right now what's kind of happening because remember it is august right so
we're in the middle of the end of august so a lot of what we're seeing right now is more on their
their shrub production line of course the annuals won't get really cranked up until about maybe
december or january but what is fun is after they grow out all of these great plants then they have
to get them out of this location right and they have to get them into our hands so whether that
is from a consumer and they're ordering for the retail or if it's growers like us then of course
they have um they have a whole process that they use for their shipping so that was a really neat
interesting place to go visit and so they have everything again is automated so when creekside
gets our order they know exactly okay this tray is going to creekside the little computer the cameras
read it they send it down all the different conveyor belts they get boxed up sent to us
same thing for consumers they have a whole great shipping department we saw some folks potting up
one gallon shrubs and various things that they were sending out to people
the fellow over shipping said it's about a two to three day ship time unless you're on the west
coast just a little bit longer but again you know it's always kind of a constant production here
um they are doing more construction of course they are growing so in fact if jerry just spins around
you can see over our shoulder here that they are working on expanding um just like you know
all these nurseries this whole industry is growing and blooming and booming and thriving and so they
have to constantly be adding on more greenhouses because they've got the demand is so high they've
got to get those plants out to us so if you get any kind of for a proven winner's annual
is either going to come from here in michigan at 4 star or pleasant view so those are the only two
houses that are the proven winners um annuals this is where they come from so it's been really neat
for us to be able to come here and see where our little babes come from and how they're grown out
and all of the thought and the care that goes into this whole production but i hope you have
found this a little bit informative just just kind of get a really a glimpse as to see how
these plants are grown jerry and i were talking we would love to come back sometime like maybe
january february when they're in the height of all of their annual production because that's a whole
nother series of how um how do our petunias come to be so as always thank you so much for gardening
with creekside y'all have a fantastic day and we'll see you in the next video bye friends