Cuttings - Agriculture - Horticulture
Paper pots and glued plugs are very suitable for rooting and raising plants from cuttings. Plugs with pre-dibbled or pre-drilled plant holes are clearly winning ground. And that’s not surprising: they save time and labour. Ever more cuttings are being produced and rooted in areas with a favourable climate and low wages, such as Africa. To minimise the costs of air transport, the plants are loaded into the planes as small as possible, and in as many as possible per tray. The very tender, lightly rooted cuttings in small plugs then undergo a second propagation phase in Europe or North America. They are to this end often inserted into a larger plug with a pre-drilled plant hole (plug-in-plug).
-
Most popular related searches
The ideal cutting plug
Good plugs for cuttings have a homogeneous composition and are extremely suitable for use in automated processes. Our Greenplugs and the Aero NT plugs meet both those requirements.
As in the case of tissue-culture plants, close attention must be paid to the plant holes for cuttings, too. In consultation with our customers we determine whether pre-dibbled or pre-drilled plant holes are preferable. In the latter case the desired diameter and depth are also specified.
Green Products may rightly call itself a specialist in small paper pots. Our 13-mm Greenplug is currently the standard plug for many growers’ plug-in-plug systems.
Managing director Peter Bak, Corn. Bak, Assendelft:
“Our propagation results are simply better”
The breeding and propagating firm Corn. Bak in Assendelft has been using Green Products’ small paper pots since 2008. “Things have improved considerably in relation to the past, when we used to plant the seedlings and in-vitro plants of our bromelias in trays with loose soil,” says managing director Peter Bak. “The plugs are supplied ready for use. They already contain plant holes, which means one operation less for us. Equally, if not more important is the constant high quality of the plugs. They can be perfectly integrated in our automated process, and our propagation results are simply better.”
Price/quality
Before switching to Green Products’ paper pots, the company tested products of several suppliers in a trial phase of several years. “Green Products offered the best price/quality ratio and understood precisely what we wanted,” summarises Bak.
A specialist company was asked to develop a machine to secure the quality of the drilled holes in the best possible way. “After consultation with Green Products that machine was incorporated in the company’s production line,” continues Bak. “And that works really well.”
Mini-plug
Peter Bak finds his cooperation with Green Products very satisfying. “The communication lines are short and we know the people who operate the machines. They have a close affinity with our work. That also boosts our confidence in our cooperation in the long term.”
When asked whether there is anything left to be desired he answers: “A really small plug, with a diameter of less than 2 cm, would be ideal for sowing. Green Products has started to develop such a plug, so hopefully that wish will come true in the near future.”