Nursery Workers

Job description

This job requires 3 months of prior experience of working on a tree and wholesale nursery. The job includes duties associated with the planting, cultivation, transplanting, harvesting, and maintenance of nursery stock. This work can require standing, walking, stooping, bending, and lifting up to 60 pounds for long periods of time outdoors in all weather conditions. It also includes making important decisions based on the condition of nursery stock according to prescribed standards. This work requires adherence to important safety and quality standard operating procedures and the ability to work quickly and consistently alongside fellow workers with a positive, professional, team-based attitude and a consideration for the safety and health of fellow workers.
Workers must be able to perform all duties of entry level workers as well as perform additional mechanized activities with accuracy, efficiency, and extensive ball and burlap [B&B] field harvesting.
Manual tasks related to the growing of nursery stock will include some combination of the following: preparing fields for planting by clearing cull stock, brush, and debris; planting seedlings or “liners” by hand, including riding and inserting liners in a mechanical planter; digging, loading, unloading, or transplanting bare-root nursery stock; straightening, tying, pruning, and shearing trees and shrubs; cutting, pulling, or removing and mowing of weeds and grass; moving irrigation equipment; spraying herbicides and insecticides and applying fertilizer, plant growth chemicals, conditioners and related treatments at the ideal time depending on plant variety, growth and environmental conditions. Workers may use hand tools such as rakes, shovels, hoes, mattocks brush hooks and/or axes.
Tasks related to harvest of nursery stock will include will include the following: taking inventory and grading plants, preparing trees and shrubs for digging by tying or wrapping as necessary; digging; wrapping burlap or other covering around root balls and securing with twine and/or staples; crimping wire baskets; lifting, carrying, and loading nursery stock; and unloading, moving or loading supplies, including wire baskets. Plants must be handled carefully to ensure leaves, limbs, and roots are not broken during digging, handling, wrapping, and/or transplanting processes to ensure availability of marketable products.
Work will also include heavy mechanized field work using power equipment. By way of example and not limitation, power equipment may include: power shears, chain saws, high lift, fork lift, and tractors.
Work is to be done in the field for long periods of time. Workers are expected to perform duties including boxing, weighing, and loading of product. Workers may assist in loading trucks with nursery stock weighing up to 60 pounds and lifting it to a height of 5 feet.
In addition, workers may be required to perform variable tasks such as the following: irrigation, ditching, shoveling, hoeing, hauling, ground operation, weeding and other tasks related to nursery operation. Workers will also be responsible for maintaining the nursery and housing grounds.