The Top Challenges Facing Young Plant Growers

Greenhouse Grower’s 2024 Plug and Liner Grower Survey illustrates that young plant growers face many of the same challenges as their finished grower peers. At the same time, they are always looking for ways to improve.

When it comes to trends in plug and liner size, one grower (names kept anonymous, per survey instructions) notes that higher-density trays seem to remain consistent with sales, while large-cell, low-density trays have slipped in sales. Another grower says, “We are seeing increases in larger size plugs that save growers on bench time at their facilities.” Yet another says, “We switched to 72C from 102C for perennial liners. This change was very much appreciated by our customers, who value a larger liner. Many of our seed perennials are also more popular in the 72C size instead of 128C or 288C.”

Dealing With Challenges

Speaking of the challenges mentioned above, here’s a closer look at just a few of the main concerns young plant growers face today, and how they’re addressing them:

• “Growing many different plants with different requirements in one area. Inbound unrooted cuttings during holiday weeks and winter weather delays. Lots of planning and communication helps alleviate issues.”
• “Growing young plant plugs and liners as a supplier for other growers is characterized by compromise. How can we attain the most appropriate growing conditions and oversite with trained and experienced growing staff? It’s a challenge we work through every day. Recent steps we have taken include reducing our item list over time, being diligent in reviewing grow time and growing characteristics for each item and adding a growing team member tasked with capturing and correcting any misses in our production data and culture guidelines.”
• “The biggest challenge is keeping up with the rising costs of doing business. We are raising prices to try to keep up with the demand.”
• “Labor costs and growing scale of customers operation; automation and strengthening sales efforts.”
• “Climate, diseases, and water quality. We focus on labor solving with education, training, and patience.”
• “Quality source material on seeds and tissue culture are the biggest challenges. We have to have good quality source material to make a great quality plug.”
• “Shipping is the biggest challenge, and we try to keep all relatively new trucks and good drivers.”