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Pots
I'm a startup tree farmer. I do a lot of stuff in pots, figureing that I can move pots around without a tree spade.
Even pots are expensive however. So with all this talk about sustainability, I looked at recycled pots.
Indeed, I just got back from a local landscape contractor. I bought a cord of pots from him for $100. He was glad to get rid of them. I was glad to get them. This worked out to 1900 #2's 500 #1's and 300 2 quart squares. About 3 cents per pot.
Mind you I have my work cut out for me. I have to go through and empty them of leftovers, and tags (good source of info on what he's buying)
But worst of all: Sorting them. You really don't want to stack Listo pots with Poly-Tainer pots They jam. (I have a 2 foot chunk of 1/2 steel rod that I thread through the drainage holes of the bottom pot. Stand on the ends and yank on the top. Sometimes this rips the bottom out of the pot.)At the #1s and #2's it's not too bad. Amoung the injection molded pots there are about 4 signifiicant differences.
Once you get to the larger sizes, all hells out for noon. Everyone wants to re-invent the pot. This one is a quarter inch wider. That one is an inch shorter. The other one has a different taper.
They aren't even labeled consistently. We all know the joke about nursery pots, "How big is a #5 pot? Any size you want it to be."f I could live with the vague volume of 'standard' trade pots. But some of them aren't labeled. Listo has a pot that the only size indication is 10.5 x 12" Quick, in your head, what is the volume of a truncated cone 12" high with base 10.5 diameter, and top base 8" diameter. Convert that to trade gallons. Others have their volume in liters. Or their size in millemeters. Some have no writing on them at all of any kind. Pots from China? I need a score card to keep track of the players.
Despite all this, I can't find pots shaped to the root systems of my trees. Spruce would really benefit if I could get a #10 pot that was 18" wide and 7 inches deep. Anything with a tap root needs the opposite: A 30 inch tall pot that's only 10 inches across.
Don't get me wrong. I use a lot of Stuewe pots. Their #2 is 6" x6" by 16" tall. The height combined
with the ridges makes for a nice root structure with no spiralling. Tall pots have their own problems, mostly keeping them upright. But a PnP growing system takes care of this at the nursery, Pallets with sides takes care of this shipping. (basically a box.) and the right sized conventional pot screwed to a 1 foot scrap of OSB makes an easy stand at the store.
Another beef: Personalized pots. I'm going to be selling willows in Monrovia Pots next year. Don't worry about your reputation Monrovia, they are good willows, and I will put a sticky label that says that the enclosed tree is not really a Monrovia product. I'll admit it looks tacky, but my reclamation
customers don't care about the pot.
So, pot makers: If you are going to create a line of pots, make them with features we can use:
1. Make them in different height/width ratios. Not all root system are the same shape. (Yes I'm aware of small variation along these lines, but it's not a lot.
2. Put anti-spiralling ridges on them.
3. Have an option for white pots so they don't bake in the sun.
4. Offer them in either square or hexagonal for packing close together for winter.
5. Offer them with a clip system so that pot 1 can be clipped to its neighbors and neither will fall down in the wind.
You can see why reuse isn't common. Startups like me can afford to take the time (It took me 8 hours total to fetch, unload and sort two cords of pots. Approximately 4000 trade gallons of pots.
The last time I bought stuewe pots they cost $1.25 each (#2) or about 60 cents per gallon. Discount 50% value for used, and 4000 gallons of pots is worth something like $1200 dollars to me.
I will also lose time in using them because I'll have to pry them apart, dispose of the occasional cracked one.
And of course I 'look unprofessional' with the non-armor-all shiny pots. C'est la vie.
What's the answer:
1. Would it be reasonable to put a label on the pot with a bar code that uniquely identified the pot.
This opens up the possibility at some point of automated sorting equipment, washing equipment,
refurbishing in general. Before you cry, "It can't possibly work" I'll point out that the beverage industry does this already. In Canada, anyway, a beer bottle makes an average of 6 trips through the system. And Edmonton sorts ALL of it's garbage, not just the pots.
2. Can the container industry itself both standardize on the sizes that are 'almost' the same, and differentiate on the pots that make a difference to the tree or shrub growing in them. Thus some pots
become commodity items, as alike as beer bottles. And on the other side, produce a larger variety of growing containers for special purposes.
Even pots are expensive however. So with all this talk about sustainability, I looked at recycled pots.
Indeed, I just got back from a local landscape contractor. I bought a cord of pots from him for $100. He was glad to get rid of them. I was glad to get them. This worked out to 1900 #2's 500 #1's and 300 2 quart squares. About 3 cents per pot.
Mind you I have my work cut out for me. I have to go through and empty them of leftovers, and tags (good source of info on what he's buying)
But worst of all: Sorting them. You really don't want to stack Listo pots with Poly-Tainer pots They jam. (I have a 2 foot chunk of 1/2 steel rod that I thread through the drainage holes of the bottom pot. Stand on the ends and yank on the top. Sometimes this rips the bottom out of the pot.)At the #1s and #2's it's not too bad. Amoung the injection molded pots there are about 4 signifiicant differences.
Once you get to the larger sizes, all hells out for noon. Everyone wants to re-invent the pot. This one is a quarter inch wider. That one is an inch shorter. The other one has a different taper.
They aren't even labeled consistently. We all know the joke about nursery pots, "How big is a #5 pot? Any size you want it to be."f I could live with the vague volume of 'standard' trade pots. But some of them aren't labeled. Listo has a pot that the only size indication is 10.5 x 12" Quick, in your head, what is the volume of a truncated cone 12" high with base 10.5 diameter, and top base 8" diameter. Convert that to trade gallons. Others have their volume in liters. Or their size in millemeters. Some have no writing on them at all of any kind. Pots from China? I need a score card to keep track of the players.
Despite all this, I can't find pots shaped to the root systems of my trees. Spruce would really benefit if I could get a #10 pot that was 18" wide and 7 inches deep. Anything with a tap root needs the opposite: A 30 inch tall pot that's only 10 inches across.
Don't get me wrong. I use a lot of Stuewe pots. Their #2 is 6" x6" by 16" tall. The height combined
with the ridges makes for a nice root structure with no spiralling. Tall pots have their own problems, mostly keeping them upright. But a PnP growing system takes care of this at the nursery, Pallets with sides takes care of this shipping. (basically a box.) and the right sized conventional pot screwed to a 1 foot scrap of OSB makes an easy stand at the store.
Another beef: Personalized pots. I'm going to be selling willows in Monrovia Pots next year. Don't worry about your reputation Monrovia, they are good willows, and I will put a sticky label that says that the enclosed tree is not really a Monrovia product. I'll admit it looks tacky, but my reclamation
customers don't care about the pot.
So, pot makers: If you are going to create a line of pots, make them with features we can use:
1. Make them in different height/width ratios. Not all root system are the same shape. (Yes I'm aware of small variation along these lines, but it's not a lot.
2. Put anti-spiralling ridges on them.
3. Have an option for white pots so they don't bake in the sun.
4. Offer them in either square or hexagonal for packing close together for winter.
5. Offer them with a clip system so that pot 1 can be clipped to its neighbors and neither will fall down in the wind.
You can see why reuse isn't common. Startups like me can afford to take the time (It took me 8 hours total to fetch, unload and sort two cords of pots. Approximately 4000 trade gallons of pots.
The last time I bought stuewe pots they cost $1.25 each (#2) or about 60 cents per gallon. Discount 50% value for used, and 4000 gallons of pots is worth something like $1200 dollars to me.
I will also lose time in using them because I'll have to pry them apart, dispose of the occasional cracked one.
And of course I 'look unprofessional' with the non-armor-all shiny pots. C'est la vie.
What's the answer:
1. Would it be reasonable to put a label on the pot with a bar code that uniquely identified the pot.
This opens up the possibility at some point of automated sorting equipment, washing equipment,
refurbishing in general. Before you cry, "It can't possibly work" I'll point out that the beverage industry does this already. In Canada, anyway, a beer bottle makes an average of 6 trips through the system. And Edmonton sorts ALL of it's garbage, not just the pots.
2. Can the container industry itself both standardize on the sizes that are 'almost' the same, and differentiate on the pots that make a difference to the tree or shrub growing in them. Thus some pots
become commodity items, as alike as beer bottles. And on the other side, produce a larger variety of growing containers for special purposes.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Michael Pawelek on -
Sherwood, I have similiar problems with the smaller containers my customers bring back for me to recycle. I am a one man operation but do have my own soil mixer and container filling equipment which allows me to grow close to 60k annuals and perennials a year mostly in one gallon containers. The problem with all the different brands of containers for my situation is that 6" and smaller are run through the filling machine in trays and very few of the brands fit together in the shuttle trays whether they are square or round. I have to go through thousands of containers that are all supposed to be 6" and segregate each and every brand. They are never the same diameter or even worse the same height and when one fills container with a machine ALL the containers have to be the same height for the process to run smoothly. This is very labor intensive and the reason many growers do not recycle.
As far as getting the major container manufactures to "standardize" containers I say "fat chance"! If every container of a specific size were actually the same we would only buy by the lowest price. The manufactureres use the different configurations of drain holes, type of lip on the containers, volume etc. as a selling point to growers in the attempt to make their containers appear "better". If 5 manufacturers sold the exact same containers the lowest priced one would win out every time. It's the same reason auto manufacturers try to differenciate their vehicle from everyone elses so that the buyer perceives the auto he/she buys as being better, faster, prettier, more economical etc. I do not know the answer to the nursery container mess. Recycleing is a tough job and with the myriad of different shapes and sizes using containers more than once is a pain. Maybe someone else has some ideas.....
Michael Pawelek
Pecan Hill Nursery
www.pecanhillnursery.com
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Permalink Reply by Sherwood Botsford on -
Except that it's all done by price anyway. There isn't enough difference between the various 1 gallon containers to matter.
It's more a case of getting locked into a specific size with your automated equipment, then you're stuck.
Part of it will come down to transportation. My last Stuewe order (Corvalis Oregon to edmonton Alberta) 1/3 of the price was shipping. I suspect this decreases as it becomes container loads rather than pallet loads.
A partial answer is for regional growers to bulk buy. If you can get 80% of the growers in an area to agree on Listo or polytainer, then most of the the recycle stream will be the same. Once you have a critical mass, the others will fall in line
in order to get access to the recycled pots.
As an interim measure, this would be a good money making project for a local scout troop. What would you pay per gallon for sorted pots with the dirt knocked out, no damage worse that the occasional cracked rim.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Pawelek on
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Sherwood, Your idea of getting growers in an isolated area to buy similiar containers so that the eventual recycle program would contain similiar containers is ok but many of us live in areas supplied by literally hundreds of growers and this would just not work. The metropolitan Houston, Texas area where I live has a bit over 7 million residents. There are over 450 independent growers within a 350 miles radius of the area not counting the mega growers who ship in from Florida and California. The containers brought back by my customers are extremely varied and a huge hassle to segregate. Are you familiar with the common black utility one gallon container? Last season I segregated 6 different sizes all marked one gallon. I even collected some marked "euro-gallon" that were volume wise more like an oversized quart!
Michael Pawelek
Pecan Hill Nursery
www.pecanhillnursery.com
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Permalink Reply by Sherwood Botsford on
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I don't say it will be easy. Here, anyway, there are two organizations, one for green house operators and one for nursery operators that have most of significant growers as members of one or the other. LANTA works hard to find breaks for its members.
Suppose that such an organization did an internal survey to find out how wedded to a particular pot people were. There would be some that don't care, some that would switch for a small advantage, and some that won't switch at all.
Now suppose that you take whatever pot is in greatest demand, and you go to the maker of that pot and ask them, "What kind of price can you give us on a 5 year contract for a minimum of 25 railroad car loads delivered?" Price can be
indexed to the whole sale price of polyethylene.
Further, they send out a letter to all the non-members that they know of making the same offer to them, but with a 2% surcharge since they aren't members.
For the fraction that doesn't care, they will buy into the program if it gets them a cheaper pot. For some they will buy in if it's enough cheaper (E.g. they have to change carriers, but not machines.) For a few it's not worth it, because they have to change too much of their infrastructure.
If you can modify the system even to the point where you have the same number of varieties of pot, but the pot population shifts toward one or two pots it would be a win.
It would take backing by the local business associations to work, and it is more likely to happen first in an area that is small, where one or two personalities in trade can drive it. Once it works somewhere, the idea may spread. (We have about 1/3 of your population in that radius, and Metro edmonton is only about a million.)
In the bottle biz, the creators of the product -- the beer companies -- have to fund the bottle return centers. This gave them a huge incentive to get ONE beer bottle. Sure we still have Mexican beer in clear bottles, and Heinekin in green bottles, but they have to charge a premium to get their bottles back. If it happens with legislation it will be a lot more expensive. (The bottle system collects a lot more than beer bottles, but everything but these goes into a grinder to make a source for some other product. Only the beer bottles actually are reused instead of recycled.
As to the number of containers: All you have is more of each type. I have similar numbers of types of that 1 gallon pot. Some are rather rare, and I don't bother. I suspect that since you are using automated equipment you are fussier about differences than I am. (I haven't seen a euro-gallon yet.) You probably get a few more oddballs, but I bet that 95% of your pots correspond to 98% of mine.
I would propose yet another partial answer:
Set up a swap board for those of you in the same area. You may find some sanity by exchanging your Poly-tainers for someone else's Listo's. You still have to do the sorting, but it may cut down on the carrier swaps, and you're exchanging a sorted pallet for another sorted pallet. As long as you're close by, it should work.
I'm small enough that much of my pot filling is done with a grain scoop or a shovel. If I get big enough to need something more, I'm going to take a look at one of these machines that basically produces a waterfall of dirt, What misses the pot goes back into the hopper for anotehr chance. That, and a vibrating table to get a uniform compaction may make a system that is semi-indifferent to pot size, at a cost of only partial automation.
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Permalink Reply by Sherwood Botsford on
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While I was out transplanting dahlias a more fundamental problem occured to me:
The growers that reuse pots are the small guys who are flexible, and, if they are like me, running on a shoestring budget, and tend to be cheap as weasels at the best of times.
The growers that can make this system work are the 20% of the firms that buy 80% of the pots.
We will get reused pots only as a side benefit of the local large growers banding together to get buying clout.
While for a small grower, If I can find a few partners to share a container, I can do a lot better than I can by myself, these economies of scale diminish rapidly once we're talking full containers/full rail road cars. While freight may still be a significant component of the cost of pots, the freight difference between 1 container and 50 probably isn't very much.
So I now agree with Paul, it's one of these events that will only happen when we see bacon in the tree tops.
That said:
I can see merit in setting up local exchanges for used pots of the form:
"I've got pots, come and get 'em"
"I want pots, #1 through #7 injection only."
"I've got Poly-tainer and Nursery Supply, I want Listo. #1 and #2 only. Blocks of 2000."
"Acme Box Store will collect pots for any company that provides a bin for them"
On the otehr side, I can see this as either a good season opening job for new employees, or as a job for local youth
groups. In the first case, it's a job that makes it clear if they can follow directions. It's a lot harder to kill a pot than a dahlia. In the second case it's a well defined task that doesn't require close supervision, and has a good piecework quality to it.
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Permalink Reply by Steve on -
Don't forget the most important reason for selecting the pot you are going to grow in... how the plant you put in the pot performs. To be real honest 99.9% of the pots being sold thru the system now are old technology. A couple of years ago I made a commitment to the Rootmaker system of growing trees and my plants grow faster with far superior fiberous root systems than what a traditional pot can deliver. I am glad to see you guys still using these old pots I think I will just laugh all the way to the bank.
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Permalink Reply by Sherwood Botsford on
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And I agree with you. But for some things the old pots are fine. I currently use standard trade pots, Stuewe tree pots, and am just starting with High Calliper grow bags. Each has their place. And right now I'm in a position that time between planting and selling is not really critical. I've got more time than money. A tree or shrub that takes an extra year to get to the right size but saves me a transplant cycle is a win.
If your land cost is significant, -- e.g. it was expensive to buy, or to put into shape to use, or if you are using greenhouse space which is expensive to heat and maintain, that's different.
My land is a sunk cost. In effect it cost me $250 per acre when I bought the house. (It's worth 2000 now)
The part I use for pots is very well drained, being 4 feet of silty sand underneath the topsoil.
My land prep for pot farming is simple:
Mow for a year.
Spread a tarp where I want to put pots.
Winterizeing is simple: Surround the pots with straw bales.
PnP is simple: Mark the hole, auger, set socket pot before the pocket gopher fills the hole. These are done with drip irrigation.
My irrigation is simple. 1.5" mainline on one edge of the field.
hose taps every 60 feet. Aquazoom sprinklers on a tilt platform that can be adjusted to the wind.
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