Sorry Anita, I’ve been swamped since I missed work for a few days for the GWA Symposium in Valley Forge, PA (which was wonderful and I’ll brag about being able to go later). I’ll just go over some of the things in Park’s seed room.
We have two rooms where all of the seed action is: the seed storage room and the packaging room. Our seed isn’t harvested on the Park Seed campus, so we take the seed from bulk and put it into our "Park’s Pak." To make sure the seeds don’t germinate, we control the temperature (about 60) and humidity (22.5%). Needless to say, it feels great in the seed area, cool and dry. Of course there are sassy seeds that require more attention. Those are kept in a special cooler where the temperature is even colder.
The packaging room is a little more exciting. Machines run to pack the seed varying in abilities to work alone and with an operator. Some machines just need a Park Seed employee to set the scales and pour seed into the top. The machine does the rest, weighs the seed, pours the seed into the Park Pak, seals the pack, and labels the pack. Others, however, require full attention from the operator. There is one machine where the operator has to work in sync with the machine, scooping seed into the pack. This is for smaller seeds, which are put into wax paper and then the Park’s Pak.
We do have a lot of quality control measures here at Park Seed. Seed packs will be opened at random and counted to make sure our customers are receiving the right amount of seed, if not a little more. This task is by far more than my nerves could ever take. Have you ever seen one of the employees counting those tiny little seeds? Anyway, another quality control measure that is taken is we test every seed variety (one seed of each variety) that enters the building 3 times a year in the germination lab. That is quality control if you consider the fact that we have over 1100 different varieties.
Hope this helps. And next time, take notes during your tour!
Delighted to share my knowledge,
Nadia