Nursery Growing Manager – Trees & Shrubs

A Manager - Grower, Trees & Shrubs is responsible for ensuring woody ornamental crops are produced to the highest quality standards and predetermined specifications. The position provides direct supervision to Assistant Growers, establishes sound cultural and production practices, and maintains a safe environment for the growing staff and general workforce. The position requires advanced expertise in tree and shrub propagation, grafting, stock-plant management, production scheduling, finishing, plant health, and disease prevention.

The ability to prioritize, solve problems, receive constructive feedback, and manage with an ethical demeanor are essential traits for this position.

• Crop Culture / Overall Plant Health and Knowledge
• Irrigation and Fertilization:
  Knows and understands irrigation and fertilization systems used for trees, shrubs, liners, containers, and propagation crops to achieve accurate applications within defined parameters.
• Monitors and reports EC and pH daily and adjusts programs based on crop stage, substrate, container size, weather, and water quality.
• Mixes and applies correct fertilizer rates in ppm and verifies injector and application accuracy.
• Recognizes crop requirements as related to environmental influences, rooting stage, dormancy, hardening, overwintering, and finishing targets.
• Propagation:
  Leads and executes propagation of trees and shrubs through vegetative cuttings, seed, division, grafting, budding, and other approved methods.
• Maintains a minimum of five years of hands-on commercial experience in woody ornamental propagation, grafting, and finish growing.
• Harvesting and Cutting Management:
  Establishes cutting-harvest standards for maturity, time of day, hydration, sanitation, handling, storage, sticking windows, and traceability.
• Stock Production and Indexing:
  Manages indexed stock blocks and mother-stock production for cultivar identity, uniformity, sanitation, vigor, yield, and freedom from regulated or production-limiting pests and pathogens.
• Scheduling:
  Develops and maintains detailed propagation-to-finish schedules, including stock availability, cutting harvests, sticking, callusing, rooting, transplanting, spacing, pruning, staking, shifting, overwintering, finishing, and ship readiness.
• Harvest and Inventory Coordination:
  Forecasts rooted-liner and finished-crop availability and communicates shortages, delays, substitutions, and excesses to planning and operations.
• IPM-Integrated Pest Management:
  Understands and implements available biological, cultural, physical, and chemical resources to maintain pest populations at acceptable thresholds.
• Disease Management:
  Demonstrates extensive knowledge of woody ornamental diseases, including root and crown rots, vascular diseases, foliar blights, cankers, bacterial diseases, viruses, and propagation-related pathogens; initiates scouting, sampling, sanitation, containment, treatment, and escalation protocols.
• PGR-Plant Growth Regulators:
  Recognizes and implements PGR programs by considering chemical choice, crop cycle, plant physiology, application timing, technique, and treated/untreated controls.

• Trials
• Follows trial guidelines and maintains proper controls.
• Provides complete trial upkeep and documentation through a written hypothesis, protocol, results, conclusion, and production recommendation.
• Creates photo documentation for trial presentations and maintains accurate cultivar, treatment, and timing identification.
• Conducts propagation, graft compatibility, disease-management, substrate, nutrition, overwintering, and finish-timing trials as assigned.
• Understanding Schedules
• Stays within preset production and ship-week parameters.
• Updates woody-crop schedules continuously based on actual rooting, growth, dormancy, weather, labor, and inventory conditions.
• Recognizes appropriate growth and developmental milestones within established schedules.
• Builds contingency plans for slow rooting, graft failure, stock shortages, disease events, weather delays, and overwintering losses.
• Advanced Understanding of Plant Physiology
• Applies knowledge of juvenility, dormancy, chilling, photoperiod, cold hardiness, apical dominance, root-to-shoot balance, carbohydrate reserves, and seasonal growth patterns.
• Understands cultivar-specific responses to propagation environment, pruning, nutrition, irrigation, spacing, overwintering, and finishing practices.
• Personnel
• Teaches and trains Assistant Growers according to…