Devin & Eric’s BLOG

NOVEMBER 9th-11^th,

2012 

Hello all, it’s the boys from the Fanshawe Horticulture Program Devin and Eric! After some of the worst planning that we’ve ever done, this is the second consecutive weekend of learning practical’s….. We must admit it’s not that bad as we are learning everything to know about Horticulture in a practical way, but 6:30 am mornings for three weeks straight doesn’t seem fun to anyone, with maybe one exception MR. PASCOE!

On this fairly cold and pretty grey Friday, we are here at 7:50am to get ready and understand our task for the weekend, “OPERATION CLEAN GREENHOUSE: Down to the 9’s”. I must say it is pretty cool that we are both running the Greenhouse by ourselves with no supervision as it allows us to get a real feel in what it’s like to actually run a full operation! After receiving our list of tasks, we began prioritizing everything by listing them due to importance and if they needed to be cultured at any certain point over the weekend.

This is the final weekend before the big sale of Poinsettias that the Horticulture Students collectively grew, so of course we decided that any nurturing of the Poinsettias and cleaning up of the Greenhouse was to be left till Sunday, as it would’ve been really stupid to blow a day cleaning and pruning the Poinsettias when things could get messy and just die on us again!

Friday

First task of the weekend was to get the Poinsettias watered so they can maintain their fullness and of course that beautiful colour. We both agree that they are looking quite spectacular this year and should do very well at the Poinsettia Sale!

Leaving the water lines to irrigate our beautiful crop, we proceeded to transfer all the rooted cuttings in our propagation chamber so we than could clean it out and disinfect it later on in the day.

Potting, as well as transferring the plants into 4” pots were also among the top priorities for the weekend. Devin was the mastermind behind all the planting all day, and even for stratifying the “Pawpaw” seeds we had received from Jack. He meticulously mixed them into a cactus mix (80% ProMix, 20% sand) and then placed them into the fridge for 60-90 days to stratify! Eric was the cleaner, pulling out every last OCD molecule is his body to scrub the damp, algae covered, wood and stainless steel in the propagation chamber with a 10% bleach/soap mix to ensure it was completely clean and disinfected.

Saturday

Saturday was a little bit of drizzly day, but what’s the weather to a Horticulturist right? Oh wait, we were inside a greenhouse…. Oh!!! No we weren’t because we had to walk around and collect samples all day today! The Poinsettia crop, although breathtaking already, does in fact need a bit of dressing up in the pot so we have set out to collect 50 Hydrangea PG stem and flower, 50 Hydrangea Annabelle stem and seed heads, 200 Pinus strobus branchlets, 100 Pinus strobus cones, 100 Picea abies cones, 100 Pinus sylvestris cones! Unfortunately, were unable to locate the 50 Cornus alba sibirica branches! (Search the common names on GOOGLE, I sure as hell had too when I first started out) This did a real number on the both the knees as walking a college campus looking for plants (as fun as it sounds) is quite a workout!

Sunday

Ah and now to the cleaning day, the day where we would take a majority of our day to clean and culture everything in the Greenhouse and I mean EVERYTHING! Starting off in our Tractor Bay, we worked our way in the Greenhouse section by section: scrubbing, bleaching, wiping, dusting, vacuuming and of course mopping every last piece of surface and sign we could see. We disinfected our potting tables and then moved out to finally culture the Poinsettia crop.

We disinfected our potting tables and then moved out to finally culture the Poinsettia crop. Our job was to simply remove any dead or decaying leaves from the pot itself or off of the plant to sure its absolute best looking stature.