Ever-Green Greenhouses Tour

September 27, 2013 - Ever-Green Greenhouses Tour

Brian, a 1974 graduate of Olds College, started Ever-Green Greenhouses 35 years ago. He started work at Central Alberta Florist where he made sure that people were doing their job efficiently.  He has transferred this knowledge base to a business where the focus is on mass production in as an efficient manner as possible.  Quality and speed are of the utmost importance as prices are set a year in advance and they can't be adjusted for changes like higher heat costs, etc.  His son Graham is also a partner in the business now.  Long term employee Cathy who is also an Olds College graduate showed us around the facilities.  Ever-Green won the People's Choice Award this year.

First stop was to see the dugout that supplies all the water for all their greenhouses.  Recently they added the rocks to hold the water better.  In the middle of the dugout the pump is on a barrel on a cable system.  Cathy is  responsible for this important resource and checks it at least twice a week.  The filter has to be cleaned every few weeks and she has found that the best method is to just use a hose.  The filter stops things like blood suckers.

The EC and pH fluctuates so this is carefully monitored and acid and then fertilizer is added to achieve optimal levels.

Germinations are done in the filter barn house as well as it is heated.

Greenhouse maintenance is done periodically and recently they recovered one of the greenhouses with new poly.  It took three days to finish the 10,000 square foot greenhouse.

In the off season, July and August they gut clean the greenhouses.  Their poinsettia crop is started September 1st.  Mid December to third week of January they sterilize the greenhouses again with bleach.  They were in the process of filling the cold frames with soil media filled pots before winter arrived during our visit.  They are set up with a very specific configuration that they have determined is the most ergonomically friendly for their worker's backs.  In March they start planting the tomato and pepper seedlings in these pots.  This method means they can skip 2 stages of transplants often done in other greenhouses as they have found that with careful watering this is a huge efficiency gain.

In some of their other greenhouses they work on waist height benches and then move product to lower bench until all areas of the greenhouse is filled.  The 5 bars across the top are also filled with hanging baskets in double layers.

  They make every effort to maximize their 100,000 square feet of greenhouse space without impeding the waterers.

In high season they have 6 waterers working 6 to 7 hours a day.  The waterers are assigned specific crops so they can focus their training.  Cathy's  advice is that workers should come in and learn the system and then after a few years can offer advice on changes.  They have 60 staff in the spring high season but there is significant turnover.  Cathy herself works 8 hours a day in slow time and 10 hours a day in spring time with spraying being done after hours.

Their A frame greenhouses hold 1,000 baskets.  Again they maximize their space by having product on floor which is transferred up once the racks are sold.  They discovered that water system was not very effective as product dried down differently so they have returned to hand watering process.  They wait until 75% of product needs to be watered.

Ever-Green has a very system based approach as the more turns they get in a season then the more profit that is earned on a very low profit margin.  Volume is key.  They have not focused on technology but instead use basic equipment and profit is used to purchase any necessary equipment.

Trolleys are used for shipping out product which mainly goes to big box stores like WalMart and Canadian Tire.  Their customer tells them what they want with regards to colors, types, etc. and they adapt accordingly.  Ever-Green makes sure to keep good crop records of temperature, fertilizers, etc. so they know what has worked and what has not worked.

Greenhouse #1 is where they control the filtered water that comes from the dugout.  A recent capital purchase was a new nitric acid injector which cost about $2,000 including installation.  This was a huge safety improvement as it pumps out of a barrel rather than old system where it was a hand pump and acid had to be poured.  Cathy emphasized the importance of the proper equipment such as shield respirator, acid neutralizer of baking soda especially since she had an incident a few years back.

Fungicides are now sprayed through their main injector rather than portable injectors which has decreased their labour to 3 1/2 hours from all day.  This is another efficiency gain and works well as long as someone is stirring and they flush the lines.

Cathy is having a problem with current crop of poinsettas and has lost 900 plants in 4 weeks due to stem rot.  Cathy has been growing poinsettas for 6 years and this is the first time she has had this significant of a problem.  They have been spraying different fungicides week after week on rotating basis until one of them works.  Cuttings they received were planted too deep.

Once again quality control is of the utmost importance.  Cathy finds that the red poinsettas are the most susceptible.  They are constantly checking the roots to see if they need watering or if there are any problems with roots or bugs.  They measure the crop once a week for height and change out the bug cards once a week.

Ever-Green Greenhouses was an excellent example of a mass production operation that has proven successful over a significant number of years selling product with a very low profit margin due to their maximization of efficiency gains on systems and processes.