Container Handling

When it comes to getting containers from point A to point B, there are some labor-saving products on the market.

Mike Worthington, owner of Worthington Farms in Greenville, N.C., designed parts of his nursery on the premise that he’d use a mechanical device to handle container trees.

When he settled on the Fanntum fabric container, Worthington also added a Fanntum Grabber to his machinery inventory.

The Grabber, which can be mounted on a loader or a tractor, pivots out, grabs a container and swings back to the front of the loader or the rear of the tractor. The Grabber’s adjustable width allows the swing arm to always be closer to the containers than the loader wheels or tracks. The swing arm also swings past 90 degrees.

“The Grabber works really well with our setup because we can drive down in between the trees,” he said. “We can selectively choose any tree in the block and pull it out.”

Worthington uses the Grabber on a mini track loader, and moves 25- and 45-gallon containers. The Grabber also works on plastic containers, cool rings and boxed trees ranging from 20 inches up to 28 inches across the top.

“It’s reduced our concerns of worker injury when it comes to handling containers,” Worthington said.

Get a grip
The Lift-Eze container from Timm Enterprises is equipped with molded handles, a feature that growers, retailers and landscapers appreciate, said Terry Hines, owner of Hale and Hines Nursery in McMinnville, Ten. “When we decided to start a pot-in-pot program, I looked at several brands of pots,” he said. “I liked the idea of the handle, especially in the container sizes we were looking at.”

Hines’ crew installed about 10,000 of the containers in 2003, and those are still in use.

“We use them as socket pots and for production,” he said. “The garden centers really love them for the ease of loading and unloading.”

The nursery’s 150 acres of pot-in-pot production consists exclusively of the Lift-Eze containers.

“We have mostly shrubs in the 10-gallon size, and our trees are planted in the 15-, 30- and 45-gallon containers. We recently added an 8-gallon for fruit tree production.”

Two people can lift and move the 30-gallon trees, he said.

“They’re a bit more expensive than the blow-molded pot, but they’re sturdy,” he added.

In the 30-gallon blocks, the nursery has a wide enough roadway to fit a palletized tracking trailer. The pots are then taken off the trailers with pallet forks. The handles extend above the pots, allowing the forks to lift the containers.

The nursery also offers its customers a 50 percent rebate when the Lift-Eze containers are returned.

“We take them back and reuse them as socket pots or for planting. We have two or three landscape companies that buy big numbers of these containers.”

The only issue with the pots is possible handle breakage on extremely hot days.

“If it’s 100°F and the plant is well-rooted, there’s a possibility of the handle breaking, that that’s pretty rare,” Hines said.

For more: Worthington Farms, www.worthingtonfarms.com. Fanntum Products, www.fanntum.com. Timm Enterprises, www.timmenterprises.com. Hale and Hines Nursery, www.haleandhines.com.