Metrolina Greenhouses

[FrankMi]

This week I am concentrating on photographing flowers and plants for Project 52.

I had an opportunity to visit Metrolina Greenhouses in Huntersville, North Carolina yesterday. They are the largest greenhouse nursery in the country with over 162 acres of greenhouses and 50 acres more under development plus another 30 acres of outdoor growing area.



They grow over 3,000 species of plants and in the peak spring months, ship 120 tractor trailer loads of fresh plants per day to just two buyers, Wal-Mart/Sams and Lowes Home Centers within a 500 mile radius of Huntersville. To water the plants while they are grown, mostly from seed, they have two 1.5 million gallon water reservoirs. In supporting this operation, they employ about 650 people.



Just about everything is automated, from filling the plant pots with soil, to planting, watering, fertilizing, and even culling out the poorly developing plants and combining the healthy ones into complete trays. The racks that hold the plants vary in size from about 2 square feet holding several hundred new plants to frames that are about 10 X 20 feet wide holding plants that are almost ready to ship.



All of the thousands of racks move on roller tracks and are constantly being arranged, sorted and moved. The entire overhead area is growing space for hanging plant pots that is also almost constantly in motion.

A New Ginea Impatiens

[Donald]

The first thing I saw on the Latest Threads page was the thread title and I thought to myself, "Oh no, we've got another spammer. This one's trying to sell greenhouses."

But then I saw who posted it!

That is quite an operation. Frank - You have the wonderful gift of supporting your images with clear, concise text that perfectly complements what we are looking at.

[johnbharle]

Wow, if Walmart is their biggest customer, hope they don't go broke! Impressive photos!

[FrankMi]

Thank you Donald and John!

[wlou]

Hey, spring is realy here? Photo #1, could you tell us what kind of lens you used, please, the deformation is most intriguing.

[FrankMi]

Hey, spring is realy here? Photo #1, could you tell us what kind of lens you used, please, the deformation is most intriguing.

Hi Louise. The first three were snapshots taken with the Canon SX40 Point & Shoot, the last was with the Nikon D3100 and 18-55mm kit lens.

The first image is a three shot panorama taken at 4mm (24mm FFE) and stitched together in Photoshop CS5. I wasn't trying to get a technically great shot, just enough to give an idea what 62 acres of glass greenhouses look like. Hope this helps!

[wlou]

Ok, that explains it. Thank you.