0:00Hi guys, we're in the propagation house here at Bountiful Blessings Farm and I'm with my dad John. We're going to talk about transporting trays. There's a lot

0:07of transportation and movement from soil blocking to getting them on grow benches and then from grow benches into your

0:14farm cart or golf cart or whatever to get them out to the fields. And there's just a lot of movement that happens in and out of a propagation house. So, we want to talk about the techniques that

0:23you guys use to make this the most efficient and maybe some of the um techniques you've tried in the past that just didn't work out as well. Well, when

0:32we started, we we decided to go with soil blocks and we know soil blocks are

0:37not as efficient timewise to make as you know using plug trays. So, we we wanted to make up for efficiency in other ways.

0:49The most basic way to carry trays is just by hand. And it's pretty hard to do

0:56more than two. You know, you can balance and you know, especially if you've worked as a waiter or waitress or

1:04whatever, you could probably stack them up.

1:06Yeah. But I mean, especially these with 3-in blocks, they get pretty heavy, you know.

1:14So, that's a lot of moving moving them down onto the bench. and then then at the end of you know when you're taking them out to the field moving them again.

1:24So we wanted to get away from that and the first thing we did was a overhead trolley.

1:31Um we just got a big oval in the greenhouse and we loved that. It worked well.

1:40uh you know is it's just it's actually components from the dry cleaning

1:48industry that they use. So we used this for years and years and the kids grew up getting

1:57rides on this thing. You just push them around the greenhouse. You remember that?

2:03I don't think I think that was uh after I was doing that kind of shenanigan.

2:09Uh, but we wanted to expand our growing space in here and basically we put in

2:17more tables and it no longer worked. You know, to have this over tables, we would

2:25have had to take off the the lower one and even this is not high enough to go

2:32over bigger plants. This this technique just limits your mot because you're limited to just following the track.

2:40Yeah. So,

2:41so at some point we kind of set this aside and we decided to come up with a

2:49just a rolling cart, which is what we have here. We actually first invested in

2:56one, bought one that was bigger. It was 4 feet long. This is only 3 ft long, but

3:03we found that it was too hard to turn the corners and the design was such that you couldn't really work it from the end.

3:13So, your little brother made this one. And did you lock the wheels? Yeah.

3:21Yeah. So, four casters, uh, swivel casters.

3:25So, it's really got a lot of range of movement.

3:30Yeah. So it can easily go down the aisles and it actually I think this one takes 15 trays.

3:39So you're moving 15 at a time rather than two and it just you know narrow enough to go down the aisles. So, this

3:48is our current solution and it's working well and you know if you're handy with welding um you can throw something together. Otherwise,

4:01maybe Farmer's Friend will sell it someday.

4:04Yeah. Yeah. Reply with a thumbs up if you think we should sell this now. But it's uh there I mean there's other

4:11companies out there making stuff like this. Caleb threw this one together and it it works out great in this greenhouse. Um the other consideration

4:18and I think part of when you moved to this design was after doing concrete in the whole greenhouse floor cuz yeah without that I guess you could have

4:27larger pneumatic style rubber you know tires tires on it but but concrete floor greenhouse uh is a big win and it makes

4:35you know just regular casters like this more viable option. So yeah that's a good point.

4:40Yeah. So there's trolleys, there's carts. It seems like this is the way to go though. the the trolley, there's a lot more infrastructure that goes into

4:48that and a lot of cost associated with putting that in. And then you are kind of limited in in where you can go with it. And with this, you can take it right

4:56out to the door and load them on the cart and get them out. Um, so that's that's great.

5:02But if you want a trolley, we have one for sale. So, okay. Uh, reach out to Bountif Blessings Farm on their

5:09Instagram and and uh they got one for sale. So, hope this has been helpful.

5:15You definitely want to invest in some systems and and tools for making movement and the processes inside of

5:23your propagation house as easy and streamlined as possible. If you have questions that you would like us to

5:30answer in a future video, reply to this email. But until next time, happy growing.

5:36[Music]