A rolling nursery bed removes the walkways from a propagation house. The benches run on casters and a track, and they slide sideways to open an aisle only where somebody is working, so the floor carries trays rather than empty routes. The same bench is the irrigation surface: the tray floods to about two centimetres and then drains completely, which is what keeps the root zone aerated between cycles instead of sitting in solution. Width, length and tray layout are set on the order rather than chosen from a list of sizes.
In a propagation house the crop is moved rather than grown in place, and the part of the building that earns nothing is the aisle. A rolling bed removes most of it: the benches slide sideways to open a route where somebody is working and close back up afterwards, so the floor carries trays for the rest of the day.
On a fixed layout every row needs a route to it, and those routes stay empty whether or not anyone is using them. A movable bed shifts sideways on its track, which means the aisle exists only while it is being used and the middle aisles disappear from the layout entirely.
That matters more on seedlings than on a finished crop. A tray that is handled repeatedly loses plants, and every lift is a chance to disturb a root plug that has just knitted. Sliding a bench is gentler than carrying a tray, and it is also how a crop gets spaced out as it grows without being rebuilt. Benches of this family sit with the rest of the hydroponics system range on this site.
The bench works as an ebb and flow table. Water is pumped in until the tray holds about twocentimetres, the crop takes up what it needs from below, and then the tray drains completely. Thecomplete drain is the point of the method: a root zone that stays submerged has no air in it, and rootproblems in a propagation house usually start with a tray that did not empty.
The cycle is run by a timer and a pump rather than by hand, so it repeats the same way every day.Because the unused solution returns instead of draining away, the water the system uses is the waterthe crop holds plus what evaporates, and the tray does not have to be flushed to waste betweencycles.
The bed runs on heavy duty casters over an interlocking wheel track. The load figure worth quotingis that one person can move a bench carrying 200 kilograms, which is what makes the arrangementpractical rather than theoretical: a bench that needs two people to shift it gets left where it is.The track is laid as part of the floor layout, so its line is fixed before the benches go in.
Legs are galvanized steel and the tray section is modular. Modular trays matter on a block thatgrows in stages, because a bench can be extended in sections rather than replaced, and the surface canbe re-laid when a tray is damaged rather than the whole bench being written off.
| Product type | Movable rolling nursery bed with an ebb and flow table |
| Movement | Heavy duty casters on an interlocking wheel track |
| Handling load | One person moves a bench carrying 200 kg |
| Irrigation | Ebb and flow, flooded to about 2 cm then drained completely |
| Control | Timer controlled pump |
| Frame and legs | Galvanized steel |
| Tray section | Modular sections |
| Width | Customizable from 90 cm to 180 cm |
| Finish | Anti rust coating for houses running up to 90 per cent humidity |
| Application | Greenhouse hydroponics, seeding and flower growing |
| Documentation | Installation and use instructions supplied with the shipment |
| Customisation | Width, length and tray layout set on the order |
The track goes down first, because a rolling bench needs a flat run for its full travel and a bedthat is out of line binds at one end. The track is set to the layout and levelled, the frames are builtup on it, and the drain and feed connections are made at the end of the run with enough slack for themovement. The flood depth is set once the system is wet, not from the drawing.
Maintenance is the moving parts and the water. The track and the casters are cleared at the start ofeach season, since grit on a track is what makes a bench hard to push and then wears the wheels, andthe tray is checked for a fall that has moved, because a tray that does not drain flat leaves solutionin one corner. On the irrigation side the drain, the level control and the filters are cleaned on ashort cycle.
Beds of this type are used for seedling and plug production in vegetable and flower nurseries, forherb and leafy crop programmes raised on trays, and for any house where the crop is moved between zonesas it grows. They suit a nursery that wants more trays on the floor it already has, an operationreplacing fixed benches one bay at a time, and projects laying out a new propagation house from thelayout drawing. A rolling bench with a 2 mm mesh top is described in the ebb and flow rolling bench with 2mm mesh page.
Standards for structures and their components are published by ASTM International. Production and technology reporting for commercial greenhouse growers is published by Greenhouse Grower. A fixed bench built for seed raising is described in the seeding bed page.
Because the aisle is the part of a propagation house that earns nothing. A movable bed slidessideways to open a route only where somebody is working, and the middle aisles come out of the layoutentirely.
Because a root zone that stays submerged has no air in it. The flood is held at about twocentimetres and then emptied, which is what keeps the roots aerated between cycles and avoids theroot problems that start with a tray that did not empty.
The galvanized steel frame and legs are rated for 15 to 20 years under normal growing conditions.The casters, the track, the pump and the tray sections run on their own service cycles and are replacedas they wear.
We provide a 10 year structural warranty and a 5 year anti-corrosion warranty on the galvanized steelwork. Details are set out in the contract for each project.
Send your house dimensions, the crop you plan to run and the tray size you intend to use. We reply with a layout drawing and a full quotation.
