From Cuttings to Your Garden
Have you been wondering how we grow our plants? Did you know that not all plants are grown from seeds? That’s right, we can also grow plants from cuttings too!
CUTTINGS
What is a cutting? When certain plants are fully grown, we cut small pieces off that can be used to start a new plant. These small pieces of plants are referred to as “cuttings” and need to be nurtured to grow new plants.
Starting in January each year, we receive boxes of cuttings from all over North and South America. These boxes need to be opened, counted, and sorted right away to prepare them for planting. This is very important as every single plant has a specific pot and mix that it belongs to. Each individual cutting will be stuck into a soil pod that is part of a tray.
The trays of freshly-planted cuttings are put onto special racks in the greenhouse where they get watered by an overhead misting machine every 10 minutes. This ensures that the cuttings don’t dry out before they have the chance to be properly rooted. Once they have roots, the baby plants can get planted up into larger pots.
SEEDS
Almost all our herbs and vegetables are grown from seeds that we plant ourselves.
We use hand-fed seeding machines to drop the seeds into place on a tray of soil. These trays move on a conveyer belt that adds the appropriate amount of soil, fertilizer, and water for each pot. Some trays can hold up to 250 seeds at a time! The trays are then transferred onto carts that are rolled into the germination chambers.
Depending on the plant, they may remain in the germination chamber for two to five days. The germination chamber controls the temperature and humidity to ensure that the seeds have optimal conditions to sprout.
After germination they can then go into their temperature specific zones in the greenhouse. Many plants will be seeded right into the pot they will be shipped to you in, but others may need to be planted up into larger pots.
TO YOU
After the plants have taken root, and been planted up into their correct pot size, they go to a greenhouse for the remainder of their growth period. Our planning team is responsible for planning out the timeline for every single seed and cutting we receive. Before we receive the supplies, they already know when/where the plants will be stored and grown - it’s a lot of work!
After arriving in the greenhouse, the plants are cared for by our growing teams until they are ready to be shipped. Greenhouse staff pick-up plants based on the orders we print, and load them onto carts that get delivered to our shipping warehouse. From the warehouse they get loaded onto trucks and transported to its destination. That’s you!