They Built their Own Agra Tech Greenhouse and It's Flourishing at El Plantio Nursery

People who visit or shop at El Plantio Nursery & Landscaping love the atmosphere that Manager Lloyd Snap and his family have created in Escondido, CA. Recently, they added a greenhouse manufactured by Agra Tech in Pittsburg, CA and couldn’t be happier with the recent addition to their 1.75-acre farm, landscaping center and retail nursery.

The nursery was established in 1959 by the original founder, George St. Dennis. He owned the nursery for about 10 years, and then Lloyd’s grandfather Nathan bought it from him. “It was like a retirement hobby for him initially,” Lloyd Snap said. “My grandfather worked for the City of Escondido as a personnel manager, and he retired and then owned the nursery from 1969 to 1976. And then my father Warren and my Uncle Bill bought the nursery from him. And they've been the owners ever since.

This year, my brother Nolan and I will likely buy the nursery from my dad and my uncle. My brother and I are both the third-generation horticulturalists. We got our Bachelor's degrees from BYU Idaho in horticulture. My emphasis was in horticultural production, and Nolan’s was in landscape design.”

El Plantio’s landscaping services include design, maintenance, irrigation, hardscapes, pergolas, garden walls, and fencing. In the nursery, they grow and sell California native plants, berries, edible plants, flowers, fruit trees, shrubs and vegetables.

“I think one of our main strengths is with fruit trees, vegetable starts--plants that produce something edible like berry bushes and vines,” Snap said. “We bring in and promote fruit trees and edible plants pretty heavily here. We also sell a lot of roses in pots throughout the year. We do have some of our own trees and shrubs that are also top sellers. We bring in a lot of plants. We supplement our inventory with things we grow.”

Since building their new Agra Tech greenhouse later last year, El Plantio has been growing new things and opened up more doors for both their nursery and landscaping business. “We started growing a lot more tropical foliage and succulents,” Snap said. “The Agra Tech greenhouse is working beautifully. We’ve discovered that we are growing a lot better quality Bougainvillea, for example. We also put a few of our fruit trees in there when they come in as bare roots. There are certain types of fruit trees that have really thin skin like mulberries and the nut trees, for example. So, we'll put those in the greenhouse and sweat them to get those buds to pop faster and reduce the chance of dehydration and die back. Since we moved everything into this new greenhouse, we’ve had like 100% success and better-looking mulberries and nut trees this year. So, we've been pretty happy.”

Snap decided to construct his own Agra Tech greenhouse and is happy with the results. “We finished it in October of last year and we have been moving stuff in there since. We built it originally to replace an old plastic structure to protect our few shade loving plants from the cold in the winter. Because even though we're in Southern California and we're far enough inland that we get frost in the winter, it might get down to the mid to low-20s here from time to time.

“Building the greenhouse was done mostly by two people and Agra Tech made it easy with great instructions,” Snap said. “James Roberts at Agra Tech helped us tremendously. If we had any questions, he promptly responded with solutions. In the end, it took 700-man hours to build the entire thing, but that included grading the site, and everything else involved.”

El Plantio already had an old Agra Tech on the property, Snap explained. “It was an Insulator 30 feet by 60 feet that we have had for more than 25 years now. We recently replaced the cooling pad and basically fixed it up so we could start growing more tropical plants and houseplants there. So, we were already familiar with Agra Tech and very happy with this first structure.”

Snap did his due diligence before deciding to work with Agra Tech on their latest greenhouse. “We checked around a few different places and Agra Tech was the most responsive and had the best options available for us. We ultimately went with a 35 ft. wide by 72 ft. long Thermolator. We are growing lush plants there and absolutely delighted. This greenhouse is going to help us to grow more great things and produce amazing products.”

Another reason why El Plantio went with Agra Tech was their sales rep Jim Bergantz, Snap said. “We knew he was very knowledgeable right away and was responsive from start to finish. He presented a lot of ideas and gave us some good tips and it was very helpful. We threw a bunch of different ideas around and looked at Agra Tech’s great website and that’s how we decided to go with the Agra Tech Thermolator.”