UK's Only PlantTape Facility
Fountains Plants Ltd is the UK's only PlantTape® seed sowing facility. Our Planttape sowing line is 1 of 4 sowing facilities worldwide. The customer's seeds are sown into the PlantTape® material. After the material is sown it is cut into the tape, folded, and placed into nursery trays. Each PlantTape® tray can hold 840 plants.
Cost-effective Automation
Being able to put 840 plants in one tray is a massive advantage to the end customer as they get more plants for their money and also we can produce a lot more plants in a smaller space.
Planting Uniformity
The leeks we grow are kept in the glasshouse for around 9 weeks before being sent to the customers. We trim the leeks between 2-3 times whilst they are in the glasshouse, and then we give them one final cut to give the crop complete uniformity before planting.
Versatile Planting System
The PlantTape® growing system is very versatile, we plant Leeks, Lettuce, Onions, Brassica and Trees with speed and precision. That’s why they call it the World’s Fastest Transplanter!
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Embracing
Sowing
Technology
Pioneering State-of-the-art Seed Sowing
Here at Fountain Plants, we are always looking for new and effective developments in the Horticultural industry and back in 2015, Nick and Robin found just that in the form of PlantTape®. PlantTape is an automated planting system built for speed and efficiency, allowing farmers to plant faster than a manual planting gang with less labour requirements.
2017 saw the first of our ‘commercial’ sowings of 715,000 plants. With the success of these plants, we were fully committed to making this work for the UK market and have grown year on year, trialling different products along the way. 2023 has been our biggest year so far, with nearly 230 million plants being produced, around 130 million of them being leeks and 85 million lettuces.
We can also grow trees in PlantTape, which is excellent for the environment, with more and more forests grown to help combat climate change. Regarding the environment, Planttape has created a peat-free media that we've commercially trailed this year with great success. A peat-free alternative allows customers to move away from the outdated Peat Block and move on to a more advanced way of growing.
One of the benefits of PlantTape to the grower is uniformity. We can start the life of a crop very evenly, and this uniformity carries on through its life until the very end when it comes to harvesting, which means the supermarkets get some great-looking veg!
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A Successful Approach
Growing on our experience
Adapting and refining our procedures and growing processes are crucial to our success. From sowing, germination, quality control, aftercare to despatch, our knowledge of the most appropriate approach for each crop contributes to giving our customers the best outcome for their seed investment.
Transplanting Innovation
Helping to combat the critical labour shortage, the PlantTape® automated transplanter plants at 2-5 acres per hour with a crew of only 3 people. PlantTape®’s innovative transplanting system doublers or triples transplanting output while cutting labour costs by 80%.