Nursery Worker

Job description

Workers will perform tasks for various employers as listed on their contract.

Crops: Hanging Baskets, Bedding Plants and Vegetables

Work Duties: Workers will plant, cultivate, and maintain crops and plants, including perennials, bedding plants, vegetables plants and hanging baskets to ship and sell to our customers. General maintenance of facilities, grounds, and equipment is also required.

Green House Production:
• Responsible for all aspects of plant growing including pot seeding, pruning, transplanting, spacing.
• Pull and store plants according to variety and growing needs.
• Lay black plastic, punch, and prepare the plastic for planting seeds and remove plastic at end of season.
• Perform irrigation activities, including setting up and moving irrigation pipes and equipment and watering plants both by hand and with drip-irrigation systems.
• Attach hangers to hanging baskets and hang throughout seasonal holding houses.
• Move containerized plants using rolling carts.
• Unload full bins/trucks/wagons at designated market and sort produce for quality issues.
Field Production:
• Perform field maintenance activities including pulling weeds, thinning crops, and spraying plants with herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides.
• Remove trash, rocks, and debris from the planting/harvest area.
• At harvest, will be instructed to select vegetables based on specifications set by the supervisor.
• Operate tractors, sprayers, cultivators, planters, mowers, plows, disks, fumigators, and other farm equipment.

Facility Grounds and Equipment Maintenance:
• Uncover and/or recover winter storage houses.
• Maintain facilities grounds including weeding, mowing and snow removal as necessary.
• Assist with the maintenance and repair of tractors and equipment

Safety Standards Maintenance:
• Be able to operate equipment with or without direction, in a manner that protects the operator, visitors, other employees, plants, crops, trees, facilities and equipment.

GENERAL CONDITIONS APPLICABLE TO ALL CROPS: Fieldwork begins at assigned time shortly after daylight. Work is performed during light rain and in high humidity and in temperatures ranging from 100 (+) degrees to 35 degrees F. Workers will work on their feet in bent, stooped, and crouched positions for long periods of time. Workers will make fast, simple, repeated movements of fingers, hands, and wrists. Workers must be able to bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with the body, arms, and/or legs. Workers will use muscles to lift, push, pull, or carry heavy objects, such as trees or potted plants. These could/will weigh 75 lbs. Workers will supply their own work clothes. All the tasks in this Job Description constitute one (1) job; the employer may assign workers to different tasks on any day or to multiple tasks during the same day in the sole judgment of the employer. Workers may be required to perform work on the farm that is incidental to farming the crops listed in the application, such as performing hand cultivation tasks, weeding, or hoeing, cleaning, and repairing farm buildings, seed beds, racks, or grounds, operate tractor/farm equipment, incidental crop set up, move irrigation pipes and equipment, gardening, weeding and shrubbing, etc. All other duties assigned under this order will be those duties of Horticulture Workers, SOC code 45-2092.01. This is a very demanding and competitive business in which quality specifications must be rigorously adhered to. Sloppy work cannot and will not be tolerated.

Special Requirements

All applicants must have at least 3 months experience working in a commercial greenhouse. Applicants must furnish affirmative job references from recent employers operating comparable operations establishing acceptable previous experience. Must be physically able to meet and perform all job specifications stated in job order. Must be able to work in the hot humid weather for extended periods of time. Workers are subject to random drug testing at no cost to the employee. All drug testing will occur after the worker begins his or her employment and is not a part of the interview process. Failing or refusing a drug test will result in immediate termination.