The Untouched Harvest: How Greenswell Growers Is Redefining Lettuce Production with Full Automation
February 10, 2026
In a modest greenhouse spanning less than 1.5 acres in central Virginia, a quiet revolution in leafy greens production is unfolding. Greenswell Growers harvests over 3,000 pounds of lettuce every day — five days a week — with fewer than 15 employees.
Its secret? A level of automation so complete that their retail lettuce travels from seed to supermarket shelf without ever being touched by human hands.
“Everything from planting the seed, to moving through the greenhouse, to controlling the environment, to picking a tray off the line to go harvest, harvesting that crop, packaging it in a tray, and then selling it in the retail store — all of that is automated with robotics and computers,” explained Ben Sword, grower and food safety coordinator at Greenswell.
Half of the company’s workforce operates in the packaging room, while the rest of its staff rounds out the administrative side: from the CEO to marketing and sales. “It’s a really cool business to be a part of,” he said.
Manufacturing Meets Agriculture
At the heart of Greenswell’s operation is the Green Automation system, a mobile gully setup that transforms greenhouse growing into a manufacturing assembly line.
The system uses conveyor belts to move channels — rectangular trays about 2 inches wide by 18 feet long — through every stage of production.
The process begins when these channels are filled with peat moss and pass through an automated seeding machine.
“It’s like a vacuum drum,” Sword described. “There are holes on the outside of the drum, and then the vacuum will pick up one seed at a time and then evenly space them along the channel.“
From there, a robotic swing arm places the newly seeded channels onto one of eight growing lines in the greenhouse.
Each line holds approximately 1,500 channels at any given time, creating a precisely choreographed ballet of lettuce production. The system operates on a simple but critical principle: take one off, put one on.
As workers harvest a mature channel at one end, they must immediately place a newly seeded channel at the germination end. Every time a channel is removed for harvest, all 1,500 remaining channels advance one position toward the harvest end.
The Food Safety Advantage
For Greenswell’s retail trays, complete automation directly translates into enhanced food safety, a topic of concern in an industry that’s had several contamination incidents.
“The main vector of foodborne illness is from humans who are sick,” Sword said.
While Greenswell’s policy prohibits sick employees from working, he acknowledged the risk of asymptomatic transmission: “The less that a human touches any produce is going to be inherently safer.”
And when production is fully automated, the lettuce doesn’t need to be washed. It’s ready to eat straight from the package.
Extending Shelf Life
Lettuce begins cooling in Greenswell’s packaging room before it’s even cut from the channel. After packaging, products move to a 35-40 degree Fahrenheit cooler.
“That immediate cooling even before cutting is a big part of that shelf life increase,” Sword explained. The official shelf life for both Greenswell’s retail trays and its bulk products is 21 days — about a week longer than field-grown lettuce.
But Sword’s tracking reveals even more impressive results. “Sometimes it’ll last one, even two weeks longer than that in your fridge,” he said.
For retail trays that benefit from complete automation, shelf-life performance consistently exceeds that of the already-impressive bulk products.
The wholesale products, packed by hand into two-pound bags by gloved workers following strict food safety protocols, still benefit from the greenhouse environment’s advantages but lack the end-to-end automation of the retail trays.
Growing Driven by Data
Today’s greenhouse growers need to be as comfortable with data as they are with plants.
After studying plant science at Cornell — where Sword met head grower Gus Brennan through the university’s hydroponics club — he spent time in research and development roles, including work at a mushroom materials company conducting bioreactor experiments.
“That taught me so much about data analysis, design of experiments, and general R&D,” he said.
Now at Greenswell, he applies those skills to an operation that’s constantly generating information.
“Because we are a high-tech greenhouse, we collect a lot of data. And data by itself is not useful unless you can analyze it and figure out actionable items from that data,” he said.
One of his current projects involves developing a yield prediction model using machine learning and artificial intelligence. The goal is to better align production with sales demand, a persistent challenge in biological systems.
“It’s a notoriously hard problem because there are so many variables,” Sword admitted. “It’s a tough nut to crack.“
Beyond Efficiency
As the industry continues to mature, Sword sees Greenswell’s approach as part of a broader shift toward food security and supply chain resilience.
“The CEA industry gives us more food security,” he said. “It’s a diversification of the supply chain that is consistent, year-round, and produces a really high-quality product.“
For now, Sword and his small team continue their daily work, which he jokingly calls “servicing the machines.”
“This is how I see the future of our world becoming: the humans exist on the planet just to service the machines and the AI, and they do most of the labor for us, but we have to make sure those machines are working correctly, and they’re getting oil, and they’re getting grease.“
The future has already arrived in this central Virginia greenhouse.
Here, lettuce grows untouched, and a handful of people are proving that agriculture’s next chapter may look more like advanced manufacturing than traditional farming.
Samurai Precision Meets Midwest Horticulture: Inside the Collaboration Driving Grafting Automation
January 9, 2026
At Ohio State, a compact Japanese machine is helping researchers rethink what’s possible with vegetable grafting — and opening new doors for crop resilience, labor savings, and food system innovation.
In a quiet greenhouse at The Ohio State University, a compact robot is doing something profound: it’s grafting tomatoes with near-perfect accuracy, and it’s doing it faster than a seasoned human technician.
Developed by Kusakabe Kikai, a Japanese industrial manufacturer new to agriculture, the grafting machine uses a patented side-cutting blade that OSU Professor Dr. Chieri Kubota jokingly calls “samurai-style.”
By cutting laterally, the machine requires significantly less vertical space for the blade to move, allowing for a more compact design.
Growers can also choose their preferred cutting angle before the machine is built, a feature that adds flexibility and customization.
It’s a small-footprint solution with a large impact, promising to simplify a notoriously tedious step in vegetable propagation — and opening up new possibilities that hand labor can’t achieve.
From Osaka to Ohio: How the Partnership Began
The story started in 2016, when Kubota was still at the University of Arizona. During a visit to Osaka, Japan, she was introduced to Kusakabe’s president, who had heard of her work promoting grafting in the U.S. The connection stuck.
Years later, at OSU, she invited the company to join her research consortium and showcase their work in North America. The company donated one of its machines to OSU — currently the only one of its kind in the U.S.
Simple to Operate, Easy to Maintain
“It’s very simple [to use]. It’s pretty much ‘place plants,’ ‘hit button,’ and then ‘get the next set of plants ready,’” said Dr. Jason Hollick, who oversees much of the hands-on research. “Most people are up and running within two hours.“
After it’s clicked, “there’s no difference between experienced workers and beginners,” added Koji Shimada, head engineer of grafting automation at Kusakabe.
Maintenance is equally straightforward. Rather than computer screens displaying error codes, the machine uses a system of indicator lights.
“Based on whatever lights are lit up, you just look and see what that corresponds to,” Hollick said.
And thanks in part to the precise angle and steadiness of the cut, survival rates in OSU trials have reached 100%.
Grafting Speed and Survival Rates
The machine grafts up to 400 plants per hour per Kusakabe’s trials, with 300 per hour being typical. According to Shimada, that’s roughly twice the speed of average human grafters.
Beyond Automation: What Machines Can Do That Humans Can’t
But Kubota’s interest goes beyond automating labor. “I’m most excited about what machines can do that humans can’t do easily,” she said.
For example, grafting earlier in a plant’s developmental stage could improve healing rates and reduce propagation time. Humans can’t reliably graft at those delicate stages, but a machine might be able to.
Lowering the Cost of Grafted Plants for Field Production
While greenhouse tomato producers have embraced grafting for years and have seen yields increase by 15%, field production in the U.S. still lags far behind due to its high cost. Grafted plants require more labor and often suffer losses during the process. Many U.S. nurseries over-seed by up to 40% just to compensate for grafting and germination failure.
Mechanization potentially changes that equation. “We try to lower the loss during the process so the price point comes down,” Kubota said. When that happens, grafting’s value becomes more accessible.
In Asia and Europe, where grafting is more established, Kusakabe’s machine has already been adopted. OSU hopes its U.S. trials can pave the way for wider use here.
They’re even inviting growers to demo the equipment firsthand. “If nurseries want to use our machine to test their plants, just contact us,” Kubota said. “We’re happy to work together.“
What’s Next: New Models and a USDA Research Initiative
According to Shimada, Kusakabe is now developing a lower-cost model and a new version tailored for cucurbits — crops like watermelon and cucumber that typically require more complex grafting techniques. Both are expected within two years.
Meanwhile, Kubota and Hollick are pursuing a USDA planning grant that would unite nurseries, engineers, and researchers around a shared goal: lowering the cost of grafted plants across the board. Partners include Tri-Hishtil in North Carolina, Morning Star in California, and California Masterplant.
The team at OSU envisions a future where mechanized grafting isn’t just faster and cheaper — it’s fundamentally better.
“Grafting gives us a way to quickly adapt to drought, pathogens, and other disease or environmental stress,” Hollick said. “By having more mechanized ability to graft, you increase the [accessibility for growers to] actually use this, economically and efficiently, for more cropping systems.“
Scaling Grafting for Climate Resilience
And with climate volatility, rising labor costs, and mounting crop pressures, that scalability carries big potential.
“I like to see the direction of machine grafting [go] beyond human. So it’s not replacing humans, but [achieving] something new, something special, [only possible] by machine,” Kubota said.
With the help of researchers, growers, engineers, and a small machine wielding a precision samurai blade, agriculture is on its way to reaching those superhuman heights.
Growers interested in testing the Kusakabe Kikai grafting machine can contact Jason Hollick (hollick.4@osu.edu) at Ohio State University’s Department of Horticulture and Crop Science.
A Midwest Proving Ground: Inside Green Legacy’s New Trial Garden
November 19, 2025
When Green Legacy broke ground on a one-acre trial garden in rural Ohio, they set out to do something different. Few trial gardens are located in the Midwest, and even fewer are built for landscapers. So, they created one, rooted in realistic growing conditions and designed for the people who shape the region’s landscapes.
Launched with a $100,000 budget in partnership with EMI — and with the support of 25 sponsors, EMI staff, and Green Legacy staff — the trial garden in Orient, Ohio, opened its gates to the public on August 15, 2025.
Today, more than 40,000 plants representing over 450 varieties fill the site, arranged not as sterile rows but as a living landscape. Irrigation rains down from overhead, shade structures break the sun, and seating areas invite visitors to linger.
Those were intentional design choices meant to mirror the conditions landscapers work with every day. “It’s not just about making it nice for visitors,” Brill said. “We wanted the setup to look and feel like what landscapers actually deal with on site.“
Green Legacy wanted to create a space that not only tests plants but models what the future of Midwest commercial landscaping could look like. The idea took root months earlier in a conversation between Dan VanWingerden, Owner of Green Legacy, and one of their key customers, EMI.
“They were telling us what they wanted to buy,” said Audrey Brill, Trial Garden Coordinator. “Dan wanted to flip that so we could show them what they need.“
Brill, a recent graduate of Ohio State with a degree in Sustainable Plant Systems, was originally a math major, but switched paths after a general education course in horticulture. “I thought, why be an accountant when I can hang out with plants all day?” Now, as Trial Garden Coordinator, she leads the day-to-day work of the garden with a small team of seasonal help.
A Rapid Rollout with Industry Buy-In
After initial brainstorming in October 2024, the project moved from design to execution in a matter of months. By the end of February 2025, VanWingerden had called 20 breeders. Nineteen signed on. Construction began in March. And by Memorial Day weekend, planting was underway.
Each breeder selected and shipped their own showcase varieties. Many even designed their individual beds. The only ask? Make it beautiful.
“Dan’s goal for this first year was beautification,” Brill said. “The breeders gave us things they thought we should showcase in the Midwest landscape.“
Midwest-First, Landscaper-Focused
Unlike container-heavy trials in other parts of the country, Green Legacy planted directly into the ground using pop-up overhead irrigation to mimic real-world landscaping conditions.
“We were prioritizing mirroring what landscapers actually do,” Brill said.
This landscaper-first approach is rare in trial gardens, especially in the Midwest, where few trials exist outside of Michigan.
EMI’s involvement also sets this trial apart: the team regularly checks in with them to understand what metrics would actually be useful to the field.
“We have EMI to ask, ‘What metrics would be helpful for you to know from the trial garden? What kind of things do you want to see that would be beneficial for people in your industry?’” Brill said.
That collaboration underscored the garden’s purpose: not just to look good, but to deliver insights landscapers can use.
“Also being so close to Cultivate, one of the biggest events in the industry each year, is really helpful too,” Brill said.
Measuring and Seeing Performance
Brill’s work this first season centered on establishing the garden — only midseason did she begin capturing the plants’ performance.
“This first year, it was kind of a trial for us, too. We were learning so much, and we wanted it to look as gorgeous as possible. And data collection… we weren’t even considering it in the beginning,” Brill said.
Still, she started tracking performance on August 1st using a basic five-point scale. Each variety was scored for overall performance, resistance, uniformity, vegetative growth, and flowering. To do it, Brill printed spreadsheets, carried them into the field, and filled them out by hand.
“When I was going out there and rating each plant, I would print a spreadsheet out and just write it,” she said. “Especially because the [internet] service isn’t great. Paper and pencil is easiest.”
Plants that scored 4.6 or higher earned a spot in Green Legacy’s 2026 catalog.
One of the top performers was Ageratum ‘Monarch Magic’ — which Brill described as a “butterfly magnet.“
“I’ve seen over 50 butterflies on just the one plant,” she said. “It’s insane, and everybody who came to visit the trial garden mentioned it.”
Proven Winners’ Cleome and Helianthus also stood out, holding their color and performance longer than other comparable varieties, Brill noted.
PanAmerican Seed’s zinnias surprised her, too. “Zinnias are one of those flowers you see everywhere because they’re so easy to grow,” she said. “So, I didn’t think too much of it, but everybody was very impressed with them.”
Brill’s personal favorite was the dwarf Buddleia called ‘Little Rockstars’ from Dümmen Orange. “It’s like a mini butterfly bush,” she said. “Usually, when I see mini butterfly bushes, they’re a little scraggly, but these were really compact and full. I was really pleased with those, too.”
What’s Next (And What They Hope to Achieve)
Feedback has already shaped next season’s approach. For starters, Brill plans to rate plants biweekly and expand metrics to include bloom time and pollinator activity. She’s also shopping for a data platform that would let Green Legacy share results live on their website.
“I’ve been asking about software and what other trial gardens use,” she said.
In pursuit of the perfect tool, she will attend the International Plant Trialing Conference in Minnesota next month, where there will be an entire session dedicated to digital data tracking.
“I’m going to that conference to hopefully learn about some kind of software, so that when I take data, I can immediately put it into the [system] and it’ll upload to our website so that it’s more of a public, ‘anybody can use this information’ kind of thing.”
The trial garden was always meant to be a resource, not just a display.
“The goal is to make this useful to as many people as possible,” she said.
Visitors — from landscape pros to curious passersby — are already taking notice. Some take notes. Others leave with ideas. And more than a few have walked away asking how they can start buying from Green Legacy.
Plans are already in place to expand the trial garden to four acres, which triples its current size, with perennial beds added for multi-year trials.
But Brill emphasized that even with the eventual expansion, their mission remains the same: highlight new plant varieties and landscape performance, beautify the Midwest, and give decision-makers data they can trust.
“We want people to have access to the highest-performing plants,” she said. “And we hope to be one of their resources for figuring out what those are.”
When Hurricane Helene Devastated Carolina Native Nursery, the Community Rallied Together to Rebuild
September 18, 2025
It was a sunny Friday afternoon, September of 2024, when the storm had finally cleared in North Carolina.
Bill Jones drove from his home in Asheville to Carolina Native Nursery, his business in Burnsville, just 30 minutes away.
Although he expected storm damage, he did not expect to find thousands of black pots scattered across the valley or three feet of water still rushing through his shop.
“We’ve had hurricanes come through here before,” Jones said. “But nothing like this.“
Hurricane Helene dropped 30 inches of rain over western North Carolina in just three days. The trout stream that bordered the nursery swelled from 10 feet wide to 100 yards across and five feet deep.
Water tore through the operation — washing away 90% of Carolina Native’s plant inventory, destroying greenhouses, and leaving behind a tangled mess of debris.
Despite running through their hurricane checklist, which includes securing the property and ensuring there aren’t logs in the trout stream or feeder creek, nothing could have prepared the property for what was to come.
“The plants were gone, a lot of the gravel was gone, many of our greenhouses were either damaged or destroyed, and so it left us with just piles of stuff,” Jones said. “You can’t stop water like that. There’s just no physical way to do it.“
Jones tried to reach the nursery on three different roads that Friday. What he found was total devastation.
“We had to climb through downed trees,” he said.
Not only was their shrub yard and perennial farm destroyed, but the road above the nursery suffered a landslide, damaging the top of the property, and the bottom of the property had been washed away.
“All the phone lines were down, all the power was out. I tried to go find a woman who works here and is part-owner of the nursery — I couldn’t find her, I couldn’t get to her house,” he said.
Feeling helpless, that’s when Jones and his wife got back in their car and went home because at that point “there was absolutely nothing we could do,” he said.
Where to Go From Here?
Before the rebuild, filing an insurance claim was imperative. “Luckily, we have crop insurance,” Jones said. “Without the crop insurance we had, we never would have been able to afford to bring in all the stock to replant.“
By Thursday of the first week, volunteers began arriving. Landscape firms closed for the day and brought equipment.
“We had over 100 people out here helping us get all the trash out,” Jones said. “It was sort of helter-skelter at first, but we started our rebuild and we’ve been working on that ever since.“
Lost Inventory and The Community’s Response
Some plants survived — a few thousand up the hill were out of the flood’s reach. But others had gotten an inch or two of water in the base of the pot.
Even though those plants were salvageable, the Department of Agriculture deems them unsellable once they’ve sat in flood water.
For those plants, Jones and his team set up a donation program.
“We ended up donating well over 6,000 plants to nonprofits and volunteer groups trying to replant people’s stream banks and gardens,” Jones said. “That ended up being a beautiful thing.“
Jones doesn’t know how they could have gotten to where they are now without over 100 volunteers helping to pick up the property.
The community support, he said, was humbling.
“As an entrepreneur, you’re used to doing it yourself,” Jones said. “My wife was like, ‘You’ve got to accept these people’s help and let the volunteers come because all these people want to do it.’“
Jones partially attributes the outpouring of volunteers to the one-of-a-kind products Carolina Native offers.
“We are the native nursery that services this whole geographic area — the landscapers, the garden centers — and we’re sort of irreplaceable in the plant palette that we grow,” he said. “People needed us back up and running because they need what we have to do their work.“
The nursery launched a GoFundMe campaign that raised $150,000 and even received checks in the mail from strangers.
“In the long run, I think it’s made me a much more grateful and humble person,” he said of the support they received from all over the country.
A Three-Year Recovery
Jones estimates the nursery suffered about $2 million in damages. Crop insurance — a federally supported program he urges all growers to look into — covered roughly half of that value.
The nursery lost fourth-quarter sales last year and much of the spring season this year. But sales have now rebounded. Staffing has returned. Facilities are nearly rebuilt.
“With our perennials and our shrubs, we’ve recovered tremendously in sales,” Jones said. “With the azaleas, it’s going to be a while. But sales-wise, we’re in really good shape.“
Among the hardest losses to absorb were Carolina Native’s native azaleas — a specialty crop that Jones’ team grows from seed.
“We harvest the seed late in the fall, right after Thanksgiving,” Jones explained. “Then we grow the seedlings into liner trays the first year, into 1-gallons the second year, and 3-gallons the third.“
The nursery had tens of thousands of native azaleas on the ground across all stages — and lost nearly all of them.
“All the 1-gallons and 3-gallons were gone. A lot of our liner stock was gone,” Jones said.
With 13 species of native azaleas indigenous to the eastern U.S., Carolina Native is the largest grower of these plants in the country (they sell all 13). And because they can’t outsource this part of the business, rebuilding stock will take time.
“It’s going to be a two- to three-year process,” Jones said.
Meanwhile, the nursery’s perennials, ferns, grasses, and other native shrubs — sourced from outside growers — have bounced back quickly.
“We already had those orders in the hopper,” he said. “So all that stuff we’re up and running on.“
Same Mission, New Perspective
Despite the upheaval, the nursery’s mission hasn’t changed.
“We grow beautiful, high-quality native plants for IGCs and landscapers,” Jones said.
He has no plans to change locations, either.
“In western North Carolina, the only flat land is near streams and rivers, and that’s where we are. We’re not moving,” he said. “We love western North Carolina. I sold my organic lawn and shrub care company in Charlotte to move up here to do this and raise our kids in the mountains.“
That commitment to place — and to the people they serve — has paid off.
“Whether [our clients] are wholesale or retail, garden centers or landscapers, they’ve come roaring back,” he said. “They were just waiting for us. They didn’t turn and start buying from other nurseries.“
Advice to Other Growers
Having gone through Hurricane Helene, what advice does Bill have for other growers, particularly those in vulnerable regions?
“If you haven’t examined crop insurance and put that as an expense line, it will save your business,” Jones said. “It’s a federal program that is available to everyone who grows a crop.“
“And secondly, if you are met with disaster and people want to volunteer to help, let them. You can do it all yourself. But why? It makes you feel good. It makes them feel good.“
Today, Carolina Native is almost totally renovated. There are just a couple of greenhouses at the corner of the nursery to rebuild that Jones likens to “having one room left to paint before being done with the house.“
But ultimately, he’s incredibly proud to have gotten back to mostly normal operations after such a devastating blow from Hurricane Helene.
“We’re just so happy to be selling plants again,” Jones said. “And that’s what everybody’s working on, either growing or selling. We’re just so grateful to everybody that’s helped us.“
At Willoway Nurseries, Smarter Spraying Means Better Labor Use and Healthier Plants
July 7, 2025
At Willoway Nurseries in Avon, Ohio, better spray technology is translating directly into healthier, more resilient plants.
This smarter, more precise approach to spray application is not only improving plant performance but also folding staff back into the nursery to perform more strategic work.
On a recent visit, their team walked us through three newer technologies in their spray lineup: a Birchmeier backpack, a Gandy granular applicator, and the centerpiece: a “smart sprayer” developed with the USDA.
Replacing the Guesswork in Spray Application
Willoway was one of the first growers to test the USDA’s smart sprayer system. The first version uses laser sensors to detect when a tree is present.
Each spray nozzle is controlled by an electric solenoid that adjusts in real time based on tractor speed and canopy size.
You can have taller trees on the left and shorter ones on the right, and it adjusts on the fly, explained Head Grower Manager Thad Kohlenberg.
Despite the sprayer’s advanced capabilities, it’s been easy to use.
“It’s just a basic iPad up there. There’s nothing really technical to operate,” said Will Mihalega, who oversees plant health. “It’s all pretty simplified.”
And that’s just the first generation.
Version two – a system that scans canopy shape using imaging instead of lasers – made application even more optimized.
“A camera takes thousands of images, and you can make a digital representation of the
actual pattern of the branching, and it adjusts the sprays to that,” said Kohlenberg.
“It takes the silhouette of the tree and only sprays the silhouette,” described Ben Averitt, Staff Horticulturalist – R&D at Willoway.
The third generation is more versatile. It’s smaller, lighter, and modular, designed without a power take-off (PTO) so it can mount on lighter vehicles and navigate tighter rows.
A Toolkit of Sprayers
The smart sprayer isn’t doing it all alone. Willoway also uses an Orbit-Air Gandy granular applicator, a converted seeder with a 24-foot boom and air assist blower, to apply pre-emergent herbicide across field rows.
Before they started using the Gandy three years ago, five workers went up and down the rows wearing a respirator mask, each covering 11 miles a day.
Now the Gandy, operated by one person, can do the job in the same amount of time.
“It puts the most perfect pattern across that area,” said Mihalega.
The granules on the herbicides were so fine that they were nearly invisible coming out of the nozzles.
“You can see [it’s] even all the way across if you look at the pot,” Kohlenberg said.
Not only does the Gandy applicator deliver an ultra-consistent pattern, it’s also dramatically improved weed suppression.
“The weed control is so much better. We used to have sporadic weeds in there,” Mihalega pointed out. “Now it’s just crystal clean.”
Their third go-to tool is the Birchmeier backpack sprayer, a compact, air-assisted tool ideal for tight greenhouses and property edges.
“It’s basically a little air blast in your hand,” Mihalega said.
The team uses it to target areas a big tractor can’t reach – like under bamboo stakes or along neighboring property lines – without risking chemical drift.
“It’s got a handle [where] you can turn the fan up and down to suit different distances,” Kohlenberg added. “And also, you can change the droplet size on it.”
Tech That Pays Off Every Day
For a nursery operating at Willoway’s scale, the benefits are straightforward: smarter spraying frees up skilled labor, offers better consistency, and produces healthier plants.
“It’s one of the things that people are most interested in when they visit,” said Kohlenberg. “It’s not highly adapted in the industry, but it’s probably something everybody should be looking at for the investment.”
These tools are helping nurseries become more efficient in the constant push to do more with less.
In the past five years, Willoway’s labor expenses have jumped 45%. Smarter spraying gives them the flexibility to continue operating efficiently… even grow.
As the nursery scales up use of biological controls, sensor-driven fertigation, and degree-day pest prediction, they are seeing healthier crops, fewer inputs, and more consistent production.
“It comes back to sustainability – reducing our cost of imports for producing a plant,” said Kohlenberg. “And then we’re getting better results with the application and [reducing] wear and tear on guys.”