The Story Behind Millions of Vegetable Transplants
Plant Tape and Natividad Nursery are both part of the Tanimura & Antle family of companies, working together to produce vegetable transplants at an incredible scale. While their roles are different, they share one common requirement: consistency.
At Plant Tape’s facility in Hollister, automated sowing lines manufacture paper tapes filled with seedlings destined for farms around the world. The system can sow approximately 17,640 seedlings every five minutes — or nearly 1.8 million seedlings in a single day. At that pace, even the smallest variation in growing media can affect production.
“The dimensions of our product are critical,” says Lance Portmann, President and CEO of Plant Tape. “Our media pockets are much smaller than conventional trays, so particle size and moisture consistency are extremely important.”
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Early on, Plant Tape produced its own growing media, but maintaining the consistency they needed—and managing the dust created during mixing—became an ongoing challenge. They eventually decided to leave media manufacturing to specialists.
“I don’t pretend to be an expert media manufacturer,” Portmann says. “I’d rather work with people whose expertise is producing growing media.”
That same media is used at nearby Natividad Nursery, where vegetable transplants are grown for Tanimura & Antle using both conventional trays and the Plant Tape system. The nursery has partnered with Berger for more than 30 years, working closely with the technical team to refine a mix that performs reliably across both production methods.
Rather than simply purchasing growing media, the relationship has been built on collaboration. Through trials and continuous adjustments, the teams have fine-tuned a recipe that supports uniform germination, healthy root development, and dependable performance in a highly automated production environment.