Maintenance practical weekend blogLaura Hill and AyssaLaCroix

October 26-28, 2012

This weekend was difficult but educational. We didn’t have the best weather which made the tasks we were given harder to accomplish but we did the best we could with what we were given. Friday, our number one priority was to get the tree planting equipment ready for the first years to plant their class tree. We demonstrated and helped plant the tree properly and after they were done we added extra mulch and watered the freshly planted tree. We then moved on to planting our own tree, the Oxydendron arboretum, or sourwood.

We properly staked, wrapped and protected the tree with a tree guard then mulched the tree with the proper technique and watered it.

 

Once we had completed the tree plantings, we started working on trimming back the Hemerocallis and Hostas in the Louise Weekes gardens, along with any other perennials that appeared to be spent. The dutch hoe was used to weed the rest of the Louise Weekes garden andwe soft raked the weeds out and disposed of them once the dutch hoe had gone over everything. Next we mulched the freshly weeded areas and collared the trees in the area properly.

At the end of the day we took all our plant waste to the compound, washed off our tools and put them in the tool room, then put the RTV back in the tractor bay.

Saturday our priority was to get the bed across from the Louise Weekes garden mulched, edged and weeded.

The weather on Saturday was terrible, very rainy and windy, so we did the best we could with edging but our biggest challenge was having the edge sink because of how wet the soil was. We did the best we could with edging, and moved on to using the dutch hoe to get the weeds out of the bed. Once we had finished weeding we mulched the area using four tractor loads of mulch and spread it throughout, we had a bit of extra so we mulched a few areas in the Louise Weekes garden.

Once we had finished that we went over to R1 and dug up 30 of the Gazania ‘New Day Orange’ and potted them up for sale. For the rest of the day we did our best to weed the R1 beds.

Sunday our focus was the G sub courtyard. Our tasks were to weed and edge the beds, remove the cedar and add tree collars to all of the trees, but like the entire weekend, the weather was against us, it was raining and very windy. We began by removing the cedar from next to the door as it was brown and dead.

Once we removed the cedar we proceeded to add tree collars to the trees and weed the interlocking pavers that led to the center of the circle. We also did our best to weed the beds with the junipers. We tried to edge but the soil was just too wet and uncooperative.
We then went back to the Louise Weekes garden to divide the Pennisetum by the Acer pseudoplatanus ‘Eskimo Sunset’
We then did our best to clean up our work site, and our equipment. We power washed the RTV and the John Deere tractor and hosed down our tools and swept the tool room.
All weekend long we did our best to clean up after ourselves and get as much done as we possibly could. The weather was definitely against us, but it was a productive and educational experience none the less!