We are the greenhouse carts and we wanted to put in a word about ourselves, before turning in (no pun intended) for the slow season.  We are a very mobile bunch.  We keep the plants moving in the greenhouses.  It is our duty to help move the plants and deliver them to their final destination.  We carts are a very specific and select group.  We are made to exactly fit the flats used at Glacial Ridge Growers.  Our twenty-inch width and sixty-inch length allows us to transport five flats per shelf.  We can be adjusted to hold different numbers of shelves, allowing us to each carry anywhere from twenty-five to forty-five flats.  This size is the mainstay of our cart fraternity, but we also have a very specialized but much smaller number of carts called “skinny carts.” They have a very special skill and smaller size, which allows them to sneak down the narrow aisles and between benches.  We carts are the work horses of the greenhouses and during our busy season we put on many miles, helping to move the plants.
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     Right now, we are quite dormant.  It is our season of rest, after we each received our annual greasing, to keep our wheels and bearings in top shape.  We are now ready to doze off for a couple of months, resting our weary wheels until the busy season awakens us.

     We are the plant tags that identify every plant that leaves Glacial Ridge Growers.  We are a very literate bunch, with accurate descriptions of all the plants that we accompany.  Our diversity is amazing.  Not only do we represent vegetables, annual flowers, native perennials, herbs, and others, but we find ourselves divided into many groups or classes of plants.  As an example, there are many vegetables in the group of cole crops, such as broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and many others.  Our collective knowledge of plants is incredible.  We need to inform gardeners about how each plant will perform in the garden as to height, color of bloom, light requirements, and many other attributes. We plant tags need to be informed and completely knowledgeable about nearly a thousand different plants.

      At this time of the season we are all snuggled in boxes either on the tag library shelves, or some of us are still in a box on a pallet, yet to be unpacked and put into the open spaces on a shelf.  We know that our time to shine will come, as the plants grow and are put into their pots.  We will accompany the plants to their final destination, our feet soaked each day and we nearly drowned as the plants get watered. We will all join our plant friends and guide gardeners to a wonderful summer of enjoyment.
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     We are the seeds of tomorrow at Glacial Ridge Growers.  We are the beginning, the essence, of next spring’s greenhouse crop.  We are an elite group.  We are all natural, untreated seeds.  None of us have been changed by GMO’s.  Some of us are “super elite” in that we are certified organic seeds and will be the beginning of the certified organic plants produced at Glacial Ridge Growers.  This special group will be fed all organic food and be tagged with special organic tags.
     All of us seeds at Glacial Ridge Growers will be protected, as we grow, by predatory insects that are released to keep the bad insects away from us.  We are very excited that we will not be exposed to any harsh insecticides.  As we become plants we can happily know we will not harm any pollinators that we contact.
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     Many of us are still in seed packets, kept at the temperature we most enjoy.  However, some of our group have already been placed into cool, moist soil and wait in the cooler to be placed on warm benches to germinate.  All of us look forward to being planted into flats over the next several months.  We are proud that all the flats we grow in are made of recycled material, which can be recycled again after we are planted outside.  It is a wonderful time to be a seed at Glacial Ridge Growers.  Many of us are native seeds and look forward to being visited by pollinators as we grow outside.  All of us aspire to growing up and being planted into gardens to produce wonderful, fresh food, and to beautify the outdoors with our magnificent colors, textures, and aromas.

I’d like to introduce myself to our readers. I am a greenhouse bench. My function in the greenhouse at Glacial Ridge Growers is very important.  The whole greenhouse crop rests upon my shoulders.  What a relief it is that me and all of my companions have been relieved of our spring and summer responsibilities.  The mums have all been shipped and all of the remaining native perennials have been moved to their winter home in the cold frames.
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     Now we rest for a month or two, have our metal bones repaired or replaced as needed, and enjoy the invigorating scrubbing and cleaning to ready us for the next season.  You can now look at our beautiful, new-metal splendor and know that as next season’s colorful crop covers us, we will stand strong to the task of a new spring.
 
Next:  The Seeds of Tomorrow

​Greenhouse benches, sanitized for spring,
Now to dormant respite, these shortened days bring.
As cold sub-arctic lips kiss the mirrored lakes,
Smoothing out the ripples and long-lost summer wakes.
Now, lengthened nights blossom with dancing colored beams
And dormancy envelopes even swiftly flowing streams.

​     As the fall colors begin to fade, our local trumpeter swans remain to squeeze every possible day out of our ice-free season.  Docks now begin their long dry land vigil, waiting for the next open water season.  Diving rafts pulled out onto last summer’s grass, look out onto misty water, now rapidly cooling as cold air presses any remaining warmth from our lakes.  The only blooms now are plastic pin-wheels in wilted flower pots.

​     Now is the time of summer to see some of the native plants that send up unique and beautiful flower spikes.  The dazzling Lead Plant is now in full bloom.  There is also the graceful beauty of Culver’s Root, the rugged Hoary Vervain, and beautiful displays of Wild Lupine.
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     We now have a very good stock of most native plants in our greenhouses.  It’s time to get the lead out and plant those pollinators.