With the unprecedented demand during lockdown, Josh explores how the nursery industry has kept up with vegetable seedling production.
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Josh is visiting Benara Nurseries in Perth, one of Australia’s largest wholesale production nurseries, to find out what it takes to get veggie seedlings to the market.

Marketing and Sales Manager, Carole Fudge, says “Vegetable [seedlings] is about three quarters of our production – we produce just short of 20 million seedlings a year. That’s purely for the home gardener, that’s not for the commercial vegetable growers in the country, and that’s just for west Australia.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, garden centres became busier than ever and this had a huge impact on seedling demand. “We went from wondering if we had to close the business to suddenly producing 5 times what we were producing before… we had to stop producing flowers to make room for the vegetables… we’ve never produced that many before!”

The production warehouse team works with several automated colleagues to pump out such a large number of seedlings. In the past, the seeds would be individually placed into each cell of a seed tray but the machines make the process quicker and more efficient by evenly distributing the seeds and completing one tray in the time it takes to place 3 seeds by hand! The 512 cells of a seedling tray are filled with seeds, top dressed with vermiculite, and watered in, all under the watchful eye of nursery staff. Once they have germinated, they are transplanted into larger punnets by a clever machine that recognises the type of plant and will leave behind any that don’t meet quality control size standards.

For plants that don’t like being transplanted so young, such as lettuce, beetroots, beans and peas, another machine sows seeds directly into larger punnets. It can pump out 10,000 punnets per hour! The punnets are filled with seed raising mix at the start of the production line, before a large, rolling dibber makes indents in soil ready for seeds to be dropped in. once planted, watered, and stacked, the plants move into the germination room where they are brought to life in a warm, humid environment.

Production staff play an important role in filling any gaps, cleaning up the punnets, and moving large volumes of seedlings into the main nursery where they tend to the growing seedlings for a few more weeks before they are ready for the home gardener. Depending on the variety and time of year, it takes around 10-12 weeks all together from seed to your garden.

The next time you buy seedlings from your local garden centre, have a think about the amazing journey these plants have already been on before they settle in at your place!

Filmed on Whadjuk Country



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