<Begin Segment 49>

[Walking around the Greenwood Greenhouse site]

RW: Tell us a little bit about the season right now that you're growing in, and what you're growing, and what we see here in the greenhouse.

KO: Well we're at the tail end of our spring season, which runs from April through June. Once we get into June, the spring business kinda' slows down, and that's why you see a lot of empty benches here. So I, I'll just show you what we have left, and if there are any questions along the way, just feel free to ask.

Right now, what you see in here are outdoor spring plants, that -- petunias and salvias basically -- that we sell in four inch pots. This house was totally covered with hanging baskets earlier, but so you can see we're down to just a few now. And as soon as the material is sold out of here, we'll be cleaning up, getting ready for Christmas; for poinsettias. And it's a neverending cycle. So, I think we can move on from here.

Let's see. Let's go down below here a minute. As you can see, there's not too much in these houses. And they'll, they'll be out of here shortly, most of the plants anyway.

RW: What are you growing in here?

KO: These are seedlings that we transplant. The ladies transplant into the flats, and we sell as bedding plants. Just for a moment, I'll show you what I was talking about in the way of machinery. Years ago we used to broadcast seeds into a flat. Now we have this machine that will take your different size seeds, and put 'em into these so-called waffles, and the machine is supposed to drop only one seed per hole, and... there was some -- it doesn't always work that way, but it's taken a lot of hand work out of it. When you broadcast seed into a flat, you had to dig 'em out by hand and separate them. This way, we have a dislodger that comes by and dislodges these little plants in these little holes here, and so the ladies, all they have to do is just pick 'em up, and put 'em into these flats, and we put them on the bench, and grow 'em on.

RW: And that was all done by hand? It used to be done by hand?

KO: It used to be all done by hand. And I'll show you, I'll explain something else that was being done by hand at one time, too. Which tells you some of the things that have improved. Now, all of these greenhouses that we're going through now, we rebuilt them totally. They were all wooden rafters at one time, and we put steel gutters in, and put aluminum rafters in. So that was part of the work that we were going through after we got here initially.

But, I was going to explain that the ladies transplant the plants into these flats. And at one time, the plants were planted directly into flats; and so you could go to the store -- and, say you wanted three plants -- they'd take a trowel and dig it out for you, for six plants. But now, we have a standard number of plants that go into a container, and that's the way you're being forced to buy. However, I think your quality has improved immeasurably, because you don't have to disturb the roots when you buy the plants to put in your garden.

<End Segment 49> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.