All Hands Alert!

An urgent call for volunteers has gone out from Rutgers Gardens. The spring sales are rapidly approaching. Thousands of plants need to be transplanted into their sale containers. The Gardens obtains many of their sale plants from Kube Pak, a wholesale grower. Any trays, or plugs as they call them, that have poor germination or have had some of their plants removed to fill out orders resulting in partial trays are donated to the Gardens.

This is what the greenhouse looked like today after the latest run to Kube Pak:

All of those tiny plants have to be transplanted into 4- and 6- packs for sale to the public. One tiny plant at a time. Hence the urgent call for help from as many volunteers who could spare some time as possible.

This is how we did it:

Each plant is "popped" out of its tray into a container and then replanted into flats. In the background, you can see the flats being filled with the potting soil which is actually a soil-less mix.

Confession time: I'm not quite as altruistic as you think. I do get something out of this besides gratitude from Rutgers Gardens. Any leftover plants are donated (or "re-gifted") to the volunteers. Here's my haul:

In the rectangular pot are two types of coleus and various begonias, color unknown (leftovers aren't labelled). The round pots have petunias in them. Again, I'm not sure of the color. But, hey! Free plants! It's all good.