Weekend practical maintenance Oct 25- 27 Jordan Milmine, Johnny Clarke, Ajay Percey Friday October 25th Fall is here and the Fanshawe Campus is in transition as the leaves begin to drop and winter approaches. Our day began planting a small patch of Japanese Forest Grass in our recently renovated garden in front of “T” building. With the seasons changing there is a lot of work to be done around campus before colder weather arrives and that began with pulling annuals and tidying up the many outdoor planters and several beds around campus. This was made easier with the use of the Kubota RTV due to the size of the campus. All in all the day was spent doing a lot of running around campus and cleaning up. Saturday October 26th – Sunday October 27th Saturday we unfortunately had a cold rainy day but we started our biggest task of the weekend which was the cleanup of the large beds outside the student union buildings and the R1 Residence. The first, and probably most time consuming step was to cut back the large plantings of Hostas which took a large portion of our time. We found the most effective method was to pull all the stalks into a group and cut them several at a time, similar to the method we learned for cutting back large perennial grasses. Once finished with the Hostas we had opened the bed up and could go through with weeding forks and cultivators to keep the weeds at bay. Sunday the weather was in our favour and we continued our cleanup around the student union and residence buildings. We began the day re-edging the beds once they had dried to prevent creating a muddy disaster. The next step was to prune the Euonymus by removing shoots that extended beyond the bed. We finished up the day cleaning fallen leaves and litter from the grasses and ground covers as well as some general clean up.

Greenhouse Blog entry - October 25-27, 2013 Emily and Jseeica Our greenhouse practical began on the cold rainy morning of Friday, October 25th. As soon as we arrived, Jeff showed us that some leaves of the poinsettias were changing colour! Then he told us what we had planned for the day and we began by splitting up some of the smaller tasks that we could get started on right away. Jess told Emily that she smelt bad so she should do the pot washing to get cleaned up. Some 200 pots later, Emily was covered with water and ready to start another task. During this Jess began propagation on some tropical and annuals and she organized the propagation chamber to make room for some new stuff. Later on, Jeff helped Emily and Jess move three large plants to the second floor of F building. On the second trip to drop off the plants Emily and Jess got lost while trying to get back to the first floor but they quickly realized they were just back on the second floor! After that, we got started cleaning up the poinsettias for any dead foliage. Later, Jeff told us what he had planned for Saturday and Sunday and by then it was time to cleanup to go home. On Saturday, October 26th, it began like any other day with us opening up the shade curtains so our poinsettias could get some light that the cold cloudy day might have to offer. We also decided that the poinsettias needed a good drink of 20-20-20 fertilizer and H20. After finishing up with the poinsettias we gathered up all the tropical plants so we could add them to the interiorscape planters and free up some room in the greenhouse. Jeff also gave us the task of transplanting some of the larger tropical plants into different pots. As you can see below, it definitely was an interesting and messy task! The last day of our time in the greenhouse we spent most of the day finishing up working on the tropicals that we hadn’t gotten to the day before. After that it was a rush to complete the important tasks that were still on our list such as pot washing, propagating, cleaning the poinsettias, closing the shade curtains, and giving the greenhouse floors and tables a good washing from a very productive and messing weekend. We got all of that done and more. What a busy but rewarding weekend!

Green House Practical October 11, 12, 13, 2013


 Dan Grady & Ben Hickey

We began our day at Cuddy Gardens writing our CLT exam, tired as we were; we had some tasks to do. So we were off on the RTV to locate Cannas, Colocasia and Pennisetum plants. We had some troubles finding those plants, so we moved on to cleaning up the cactus bench being careful where we put our hands. We then gave the poinsettia there blackout period. It was a short work day but lots of work to do tomorrow. We Started are first long work day, and like any other morning the poinsettia’s needed to get some sunshine, there’s lots of sun so it’s looking like it will be another nice day.

We started deadheading the poinsettias being very careful as they are delicate, the next task was cleaning out the courtyard, lots of sweeping, but we found giving it a pressure wash gave it that nice clean look that it needed. We ran into a little issue with temperature with the poinsettias, that being how hot of a day is was becoming and having the roof open made the greenhouse temperatures more high than they should be, we called Mike and we were told to give him updates throughout the day. He reassured us that the sun will heat up the greenhouse rapidly on warm days, but should not affect the crop. We finished up the day by doing a big clean and blacking out the poinsettias. It’s been a long day we will definitely have a good sleep tonight.


Our last day in the Greenhouse, the weather was a lot different then yesterday, it’s cold and rainy but that’s Mother Nature. As usual we opened up the blackout for the poinsettias there is a definitely a big change in temperature from yesterday. We decided to clean up the compound and organize it hopefully the weather will hold. We finished off the day by doing a big clean sweeping and spraying down the floors.

Courtney and Katlyn's greenhouse blog - October 4-6, 2013


We started our 3 day greenhouse practical on a very gloomy Friday morning. We needed to start off our morning by going through a greenhouse opening checklist (checking the facilities and all of the plants). After finishing up the checklist we went in to pull back the shade curtains. At this point we have started the short days and longer nights with the Poinsettia crop. It’s crucial so keep on a very routine regiment with the shade curtains so we made sure to watch and make sure the top curtains were opening correctly as well. With the set-up of the greenhouse and having the tall tropical plants inside it was quite tricky maneuvering around them as well as the fragile Poinsettias to reach the curtain hoops. Having a tall friend can be quite handy in this situation! After finishing up the shade curtains we moved on to our next duty which was re-potting some colocasia, purple tree aeonium, pineapple palm, as well as our Wollemia nobilis (Wollemia Pine). This took us some time as we needed to transfer all of the potted up colocasia from the compound into bulb crates. We labeled each crate and moved on. When potting up the purple tree aeonium we needed to stake it for support (it was quite top heavy!). It’s quite interesting how the Pineapple Palms stem actually resembles the fruit pineapple. Katlyn took on walking through the Poinsettia crop to ensure that all pots had drip-lines in them and that each plant looked healthy. While walking through she noticed there was one plant in particular that had been infected with a familiar virus. Hopefully this isn’t a bad sign! Katlyn removed the infected plant and quarantined it so that it would not infect the rest of the crop. A few plants required hand watering but once this was finished up we found it was time to clean. We washed up the pots and cleaned off all areas we had used. Disinfecting as we went along.

We came in to work Saturday morning hoping for some sunshine and nicer weather. Another gloomy day awaited us unfortunately! We drank our morning timmies and headed in to the tractor bay. We were going out in the Rtv to collect all of the Canna Lilys from around campus. We needed to label them and store them in bulb crates in our outdoor compound. We had no idea how many Cannas awaited us on campus and most of them surrounded the greenhouse. To fit all of the Cannas into the compound we needed to move a lot of the plants around in the compound and still found it was a tight fit! We were able to locate a few tags for the plants we removed and kept them with those specific plants.


Sunday was a day all about house keeping and cleaning! This may seem like a tedious job to many but to us hort techs we know that a clean greenhouse will lead to a healthy crop. You never want to have any plant debris or old media on the ground. This meant washing down the entire greenhouse floor, the potting room floor as well as the tractor bay floor. We removed the drains from inside the greenhouse and gave them a good washing to make sure there were no remnants of debris. The drains were surprisingly heavy! We switched out the IPM sticky traps while we were cleaning in the greenhouse. We substituted between the colours yellow and blue because certain bugs had adapted to certain coloured traps. We found the traps just kept trying to stick to us! Our last task was putting up some double sided velcro to close the curtains in areas where it was hard to reach (around drip lines and piping). We closed the shade curtains and took one last walk around the greenhouse before closing up and heading home for the evening. It was a long weekend but we had made it!

Maintenance Blog Entry: October 4, 2013 to October 6, 2013

Sky Holbrook and Jessica Genttner

Our weekend started out slow with a minor defeat when it came to having to retrieve metal barricades for the construction crew working beside the greenhouse. I volunteered to drive the tractor but swiftly accepted that I was not ready to back up with a trailer behind me. I was able to back the tractor out of the building but quickly threw in the towel and pulled forward when I become aware of all of the surrounding traffic and obstacles. Jeff came to the rescue and directed me out of the building through the other door and between the construction barricades.

After wasting a significant amount of time in the morning with the tractor defeat Jessica and I took a time out to create a plan to make up for the time we lost. We both agreed that we would only fall even more behind if I was to attempt using the tractor again so we agreed that we would set out on foot to conquer the daylily bed; which we would soon learn would become a much larger job then either of us were prepared for. We spent the remainder of the day working on both the daylily bed and the front entrance.

Saturday morning began by the two of us returning to the daylily bed but after just a few hours we both agreed that we would accomplish more by splitting up. I remained at the daylily bed and Jessica began working on the iris bed. By the end of the second day it seemed we were no further ahead than the day before. I still wasn’t able to complete the daylilies and Jessica was only able to weed half of the iris bed. We weren’t sure if we would be able to complete our weekend practical, so we ended the day by cleaning our tools and preparing for the next day.

We both returned to our tasks in the early morning with a strong determination to meet our goals and after countless hours cutting back daylilies, shearing to even heights, racking and weeding the garden was complete. I moved onto the next assignment and began completing jobs at a much faster rate. I was able to complete the pruning of the dogwood from the path, the lilac from above the garbage can, the sumacs leafless branches, and clear the walkway in front of K building from clove current. The day was coming to an end but Jessica and I knew we had only one job left to complete; the iris bed. Working along-side Jessica in the iris bed was a perfect way to end a weekend that seemed impenetrable. We weren’t able to complete the bed but it still felt like a triumph. We packed up our tools in the RTV and took off towards the tool room to clean them for the last time this weekend.

Friday Sept 27th We began our practical with the cleaning and ultimate rearrangement of the poinsettia crop. The enormity of this task was unanticipated, as it occupied most of our day and we were (sadly) unable to attend to many of our other duties. Labelling of the various cultivars is in progress. The greenhouse was watered thoroughly, as were the elephant ears and other perennials currently residing in the outside storage area. Garden mums were installed in a square planter located outside H building near the bus stops, which involved the removal of all annuals and residual weeds. We received a small shipment from AM Cuddy Gardens, which is to be sprayed with insecticidal soap so it can join the rest of our plant material in the greenhouse. Included in the delivery were our succulents, a ficus trained by way of espalier, and a slew of other interesting flora. The rest of the weekend will be busy, as the organization of the poinsettia crop must be completed by Sunday. Saturday Sept 28th The students were off to a late start in the greenhouse today as it was the much anticipated Veteran’s Memorial Parkway tree planting. Over 400 trees were put to ground with the help of hundreds of green thumbed, community-minded volunteers. The event was a great success, and the mass planting was followed promptly by a complimentary lunch with live music. Pictures were taken and clean up commenced. Following the event, serious progress was made with the organization of the poinsettia crop. Yesterday’s plant shipment from Cuddy’s was sprayed with a diluted insecticidal soap solution, thus making it possible for them to join our collection. Tomorrow will be our busiest day, with the final clean up in the greenhouse and other tasks needing to be addressed. Sunday Sept 29th After two and a half days of thorough organization and labelling, the poinsettia crop is now in proper order. In preparation for congress, pineapple mint perennials were cut back and rooted in thirty 3” pots for later use. The weekend students created signs for various greenhouse operations and tools, including the different pot types and plant labels to assist other students’ in their greenhouse activities. Pothos plants were given new homes in hanging baskets, having been sitting in 3” pots for several weeks. Everything was given a light watering, as the day was overcast and UV levels were low. All in all, a productive weekend was had.