Recently an industrial floor sweeper was delivered to Schrijnwerkers. Schrijnwerkers is one of the largest blueberry plant nurseries in Europe. Located in Overloon, the Netherlands, it consists of a five hectare container field and a five thousand m2 greenhouse in which multiplication and propagation of two- and three-year-old plants in P9, 2, 3 and 5 liter pots takes place. The Stefix 135 machine from Steenks Service was chosen. This sweeper machine is mainly used indoors in flower and plant greenhouses, but also for outdoor fields.
Leon Schrijnwerkers
Weed seeds
With his new addition, the nursery always looks neat, but that is not the reason that director Leon Schrijnwerkers bought the sweeper. “Such a sweeper is mainly for hygiene. This is very important in plant cultivation, because we want to remove weed seeds that always seem to be in every nook and cranny. We don't want those weeds, especially impatiens. When such a plant blossoms, the seeds spread all over the field quickly. Removing all those weeds takes a lot of time and increases labour costs, because in pot cultivation it all has to be done manually.”
Working neatly
Prevention is better than cure, so Leon makes sure that work is always done neatly. “We can work even better with such a machine. With a normal broom, weed seeds are too often left behind and you often have a large dust cloud. The brush on the Stefix machine brushes the dirt inside and sucks it up, you can't do that as nicely by hand. In addition, the sweeper machine also contains filters so that the fine dirt remains in the bin. Everything is sucked up and you sweep completely dust free.”
Especially after a season when the plants on the container field are packed and shipped, the sweeper is used. “A lot of leaves are left on the container field. With a large suction sweeper from Trilo behind my tractor, I already remove three cubic meters of leaves from the field. After that, the Stefix 135 is used to clean the rest.”
Sweeping becomes a lot more fun
Leon notices that his employees are also happy with the new sweeper. "Sweepers that you operate walking behind it are cheaper, but you can sit on this machine and that makes sweeping a lot more fun." In addition, of course, the economic importance also counts. "With labour cost of at least fifteen euros gross per hour, it is easy to calculate that a lot of weeds is costly."
For more information:
Schrijnwerkers Plants BV
Leon Schrijnwerkers
www.schrijnwerkers.nl
leon@schrijnwerkers.nl
Steenks Service
info@steenks-service.nl
www.steenks-service.nl