Twixwood Blog #7

Young Carex pensylvanica, 2017
Young Carex pensylvanica, 2017

It got cold this week and so my mind switched over from shipping plants to making plants.  We do a lot of plant production in the winter and for three very good reasons.  First of all, many plants only divide and grow good in the winter.  These would be all of the Carexes (sedges to normal people).  They need it cool and if divided and potted up starting in late November they are the happiest.  We are doing several hundred thousand Carex pensylvania this winter because several years ago it was in short supply.  When it is ready to sell it will be on our website.

Another good reason for winter production is to keep our regular crew busy all winter so they will be around in the summer.  There are only so many telenovelas a person can watch and still function.  What we do to make money is cut and stick about four million pachysandra ‘Green Carpet’ cuttings.  Because of how the plants grow outside in our acres of cutting beds, these can only be cut and propagated efficiently in July and August, so we need to have our crew of 15-20 skilled people on hand then.  What with everything going on in the world, from the economy jumping, to political rumors going on, we need to keep our crew working year around.  The system we have developed is working very well.  We have heated indoor work space, minimally heated double poly ground-to-grounds to put the trays of plugs into, and cold frames to store the clumps after they are dug in November.

Grasses in stock field, 2017
Various grasses in stock field

And I forgot the third reason and this will happen to you also, so do not make fun of me.  Other plants that only work in the winter are the grasses.  When dormant the roots are not sensitive to drying out.  In the summer, about ten minutes out in the sun and wind and they are completely, not a little bit, completely dead.  We do all of the grasses that we sell in gallons and then some for liner sales which is why we produce several hundred thousands of Schizachyrium scoparium (Little Bluestem to normal people).  Everyone and their dog has made a selection of this plant and then gone out and patented it so we are always scrambling to get in some stock which is the latest fad to get going out in the fields.  The new ones are gaudy blue in the spring and gaudy red in late summer and fall and they are all stiffly upright, except that we are getting some vibes that one of the first—and unpatented—selections ‘The Blues’ is going to be in hot demand because it lodges (flops over after it gets either some rain or some fertilizer, to normal people) and by falling over all of the time it mimics native and nativar plants which causes the native plant enthusiasts to wet their pants with enthusiasm.

Pachysandra 'Green Carpet'
Pachysandra ‘Green Carpet’

And now I am remembering the third reason, which is to make perennial plugs for sale to other people.  I am a little late figuring out this really great market.  We have spent our entire life here at Twixwood making what used to be in hot demand and what is now a commodity—pachysandra and other groundcovers such as myrtle (vinca minor to normal people).  Meanwhile, the smart people in the nursery trade figured out that they could get twice the money for half the work if they grew plugs and then, to pour salt on the wounds, the market was to other nurseries instead of landscapers and so the pay was better.

These mythical, ethereal, and slightly out-of-reach plug  liner plants are the easiest grown in the winter.  For an example, last fall I was told to dig a row of Geranium x cantabrigiense  ‘Biokova’.  Instead, we pulled a few handfuls of leaves and stems and ended up smelling like we had stuck our hands into a pitch barrel and now we have hundreds of flats of 38 cell pak plugs well rooted and ready to sell and no reputation for growing them.  Speaking of hardy geraniums, many of these, the sanguineum family, grow easiest from root cuttings.  This method of propagation has to be done in the winter.  I think that it is fun, cheating even, because it is so much fun to grow plants from root cuttings.  Having had fun is why we now have flats and flats of Geranium sanguineum var. striatum which used to be called ‘Lancastriense’.  This is the low-growing one with the light pink blooms with deep red veining in the petals.  Because it is low-growing, one needs to either have very good eyesight or to be inordinately clumsy such as to fall down a lot in order to fully appreciate the subtle beauty of this plant.

Closeup of Geranium 'Biokovo' flower, 2017
Flower of Geranium ‘Biokovo’

This essay started out attempting to be a serious analysis of our business.  We have lots of people—one hundred sixty at peak summer time—and over eighty year around.  Unlike the bedding plant people who have expensive greenhouses and concrete floors and many labor saving mechanisms, we spend money on labor with great abandon.  Dianne tells me that I can make no reference to gender in my writing, and so the reader will have to figure out what kinds of work are done by men and what kinds by women.  Maybe I should not even mention that we have men and women—that they should just be called ‘people’.  Maybe calling them men and women implies that we do not hire other kinds of people.  Let me dance around that topic by just saying that we are in this business to make a little money and at this stage in our lives we do not inquire too closely about what our employees do in their spare time.  Remind me next time to not even bring it up in the first place.

Anyhow, what we do is meticulous hand work that involves optical-digital motility.  We take cuttings, stick cuttings, divide into single little divisions small plants, and then pot them or plant them or whatever into cells as small as a 98.  We sometimes stick into a 105.  These are the numbers of cells in a standard 10-20 tray that is really 11” by 21”.  Thus, our work is labor-intensive.  Many nurseries grow Number 1 containers of perennials.  That business is capital intensive.  We are not in a position to be in a capital intensive business because we spend all of our money on labor and have nothing left over to purchase large acreages of land, or expensive potting machines, or truckloads of crushed rocks and gravel for the growing beds.

Geranium 'Biokovo' flowering, 2017
Geranium ‘Biokovo’

The reader can assist us by informing us about four years in advance what the next great hot plant is going to be so we can get some stock in and planted in the field so that it can be run through our process, as so eloquently described above, and then we can make money by producing a liner and not just by making lots of a commodity product.   Keep those cards and letters coming.

The real reason that we do much hand work with little in the way of labor saving automation is psychological.   We are inflicted with the requisite number of bean counters here in our business.  Much is made of poring over pages of numbers in columns.  Some people even think that useful information might come from this study.  At the least, these accounting types think they learn some things from looking at numbers and so they are alert whenever a number crosses their desk that involves the purchase of a conveyor or a hydraulic power pack or a flat filler or a tray washer, or even some concrete for a section of floor.  This is something they can deal with.  And they deal with it by saying no in several different levels of intensity.  The weekly payroll is just a lot of money but the bean counting people do not step out of the office to study exactly what the people on the payroll are doing with their time and our money.  I could go on but I do not have my bottle of heart medicine handy right now.