Moffatt's - the Jiffy Success
Success story from New Zealand –Jiffy grow bags and Jiffy 7C coco pith pellets at Moffatt’s Flower Company.
Moffatt’s Flower Company Ltd (www.moffatts.co.nz) is one of the larger rose growers in New Zealand. Since 1949 the family business have been growing their roses on the foothills of the Port Hills in Christchurch (South Island).
Currently they grow 35 varieties under 2.1 Hectares of modern glasshouse. An advanced Dutch computer system is in place to take care of the climate and irrigation control. In the early 90’s the switch was made from growing in the soil to hydroponics.
At the moment Moffatt’s use Jiffy 7C coco pith pellets (40x45mm) and Jiffy grow bags (100x15x11cm with 50% husk chips and 50% coarse coco pith mixed) for propagation and growing of roses.
Mr.Leonard Arkesteyn’s – the Production Manager at Moffatt’s Flower Company is kind enough to share his experience on Jiffy grow bags and Jiffy 7C pellets with others. Mr.Leonard (known as Lenny to his colleagues) was born in Holland and living in New Zealand for 18 years and is responsible for growing beautiful blooms at Moffatt’s.
This is Lenny’s success story with Jiffy grow bags and Jiffy 7C pellets;
At first pumice stone was used as a growing medium, this was a step forward in terms of control, but it didn’t take too long to also find the downside using pumice, difficult to get the plant going, very labour intensive to set up and take out (waste problems) and with hot weather you can go round with water quick enough.
Then we started to focus on coconut fibre, this made the set up so much easier, the plants started much easier and there was a huge labour saving. When we made to conversion, a lot of people supplied coco products, competition was fierce.
We have been through a steep learning curve, we had plastic bags disintegrate after a few weeks, we had problems with growth reduction after a couple of months. We bought “buffered” coco that still had an EC of 12. After a while we decided to do the buffering ourselves, then at least we had the peace of mind that it was done properly, despite the extra work.
Then Jason from Egmont Commercial (Jiffy distributor in New Zealand) visited us one day with some sample slabs, my initial thought was “here we go again another one who thinks he has got something!”. However I did try them and was pleasantly surprised, I extended the trial and now all I have is Jiffy.
As we do our own propagating (we are the New Zealand agent for German breeder Tantau) and propagating for other rose growers, we decided to have a look if further improvements could be made.
In the past we made our own potting mix, which worked reasonably well at that time. Again, it was labour intensive and the mixture was hard to get consistent. Jason’s persistence again made sure that we tried a box of Jiffy 7C pellets. I was pleasantly surprised to see the speed and consistence in the plants. We cut nearly two weeks of the time to grow a plant. Our own mix was ditched pretty quickly after that, we have been using the Jiffy 7C now for over two years.
The last few years been very eventful (to say the least). We started new year’s day 2010 with a big fire, which burned the office, fertilizer and boiler room down. Later that year a big earthquake rocked the district. Unfortunately Moffatt’s Flower Company suffered major damage too. That day, I didn’t think we could survive the damage financially. We have repaired all glasshouses, we replaced 5000 square meters with new structures. And we have got a nice crop. When you start with a good plant, you benefit from that for the rest of the plant’s life.
In terms of the re-start, everything was going well, we propagated the plants in the Jiffy 7C’s, they got planted in a brand new glasshouse on new Jiffy slabs. Because of the size of the plug we had to move the plants quick, the majority of growers place the plant on top of the slab (in a bigger plug). We place the plant into the slab. This makes the planting slightly slower, but it saves cost and makes it easier to fold the plants over. In one compartment we picked the first roses within 3 months after propagating.
The only other thing we do is, we raise the slab with some reinforcement steel, so it sits above the gutter, this is to make sure we always have proper draining from the slab.
We have been using the Jiffy slabs now for eight years and the Jiffy 7C plugs for just over five years, and I believe they are the BEST in the business.