This Week’s Focus in the Greenhouse
This week in the greenhouse, nearly all of our time continued to be spent preparing and shipping pre-order live pepper plants.
Over the past few weeks, the team has been working through an incredibly high volume of orders, and at one point we were approximately five days behind on shipments. Because of this, regular live plant orders placed after pre-orders closed will begin shipping once the remaining pre-order shipments are completed.
The team has truly been in full shipping mode, cutting rockwool, performing quality checks, labeling plants, staging orders, and preparing thousands of plants for shipment.
We know many customers are still waiting for their plants, and we want you to know we’re hustling through orders as quickly as possible. Hearing positive feedback from customers receiving their plants has made the long days worth it.
Live Pepper Plants: Production Update
Current Growth Stage
Pepper plants throughout the greenhouse continue to span all stages of growth, from newly planted seedlings to plants actively being prepared for shipment.
With shipping still underway, maintaining plant health while moving through high daily volumes has remained one of the team’s biggest priorities.
One of the biggest improvements this season has been plant quality. Compared to previous years, plants are shipping out larger, stronger, and more established before leaving the greenhouse.
Healthy, established pepper plants continue moving through quality checks and shipping preparation before heading to their new homes.
A greenhouse team member inspecting a pepper plant and placing in a variety tag after it passes quality checks and is approved for shipment. Plants that do not meet our standards or rockwool cells without growth are thrown away during the inspection process.
Shipping Preparation in Full Swing
For several weeks, the greenhouse team has been operating in full shipping mode.
Shipping days were scheduled around the workload capacity of our shipping department, which meant the greenhouse team often spent Monday through Thursday focused entirely on preparing plants.
On average, the team prepared approximately 1,600 plants per day, with the busiest day reaching 2,711 plants prepared for shipment.
Our greenhouse team consists of two greenhouse technicians, and during the busiest weeks, two additional teammates stepped in to help support plant prep and shipping operations. It truly became an all-hands-on-deck effort across the team.
Every single plant shipped was individually assessed for quality before leaving the greenhouse. This process takes time, but it’s one of the most important parts of what we do, we’re picky because we want customers to receive strong, healthy plants.
A Biquinho White pepper plant after passing quality inspection, showing healthy foliage, strong structure, and the growth characteristics we look for before shipping.
Observations & Wins
A Huge Team Effort
This season’s pre-order shipping push required coordination across multiple teams, and it truly became an all-hands-on-deck effort.
While the greenhouse team focused on preparing and quality checking thousands of plants, our customer service team worked through a huge increase in emails and phone calls throughout the shipping season. Much of that responsibility fell on one team member, who spent weeks helping customers track orders, answer questions, and keep communication moving during one of our busiest times of the year.
We also want to give a huge thank you to our shipping team, who took on a massive increase in daily volume while continuing to keep orders moving out the door as quickly as possible.
It took effort from every corner of the team to make this season happen, and we’re incredibly appreciative of everyone who stepped in to help.
Our customer service specialist helping customers track orders, answer questions, and keep communication moving during the busy pre-order shipping season.
Pre-Order Shipping Totals
We’re excited to finally share our tentative total for pre-order live pepper plants shipped this season in a five week span:
🌱 24,117 Live Pepper Plants Shipped
That number represents weeks of planting, watering, monitoring, cutting rockwool, performing quality checks, labeling, and preparing plants for shipment.
Every single plant that left the greenhouse was individually inspected before being approved to ship.
Seed Stock Production
There are no major updates for seed stock production this week.
Repotted seedlings continue growing and are nearly ready to be sent to local growers, where they will be grown out through the season for future seed harvests.
Seed stock seedlings continuing to grow in the greenhouse before being sent to local growers to be grown out for future seed production.
Looking Ahead
As we wrap up the remaining pre-order shipments, next week’s focus will shift toward catching up on regular live plant orders placed after pre-orders closed.
The team is also looking forward to slowly settling back into more regular greenhouse routines, including:
• Planting new flats of pepper seeds
• Continuing seed stock production
• Maintaining plant health across all greenhouse stages
• Returning to some of our normal day-to-day responsibilities outside the greenhouse
What This Means for Home Growers
The past several weeks have been focused on one thing: getting strong, healthy pepper plants into customers’ hands.
The extra time spent preparing, inspecting, and organizing plants helps ensure they arrive healthy, established, and ready to continue growing once planted in your garden.
We truly appreciate everyone’s patience throughout the busy shipping season and are excited to continue growing alongside you this year.
Keep Up with the Greenhouse
Missed a week?
👈 Week 18: Last Week’s Update
Want to see how the season started?
👉 Start at Week 1
Stay spicy friends, and thank you for following along through one wild shipping season!
🌶️ The Pepper Joe’s Growing Team