Planting The Seed

Welcome to Next Crop Blog.

This is the monthly letter we wished we could hand every agriculture and FFA teacher who walks our production floor in Mason. You come for a tour, a tray of plugs, a plant-sale fundraiser, or a straight answer about whether a student should look at greenhouse work. We want to keep that conversation going after the bus leaves.

Each month we’ll share what’s growing at Bob’s Market and Greenhouses — crop timing, facility news, and industry headlines worth a class discussion — plus the practical pieces of our educational outreach: how to schedule a tour for middle school through college, how school greenhouse programs can buy partial trays and finished product at educator pricing, and how job shadowing, internships, and Green Career Week actually work here.

Bob and Corena Barnitz started this company in 1970 with a backyard greenhouse. Today we grow hundreds of millions of seedlings and ship finished plants across much of the eastern United States. The next crop is not only in the trays. It is the students who might become growers, technicians, drivers, and plant professionals. That’s what this blog is for.