Summer Blog - Claire H.

July 16-20, 2018

     This week, the entire summer gardening crew made the trip out to Strathroy to prepare for a special summer garden tour hosted at the A.M. Mac Cuddy Gardens. On Wednesday morning we installed fresh mulch along the hatchery bed where a huge assortment of varieties of daylilies were in full, glorious bloom. By the afternoon (and after many, many, loads of mulch), all of the garden beds surrounding the Cuddy house looked crisp and picture-perfect. The dry and alpine gardens were refreshed with a thorough weeding and raking, and the hoop-house / plant sale center was sorted, organized and ready to go. After a final watering and weeding on Thursday, 50 Master Gardeners arrived from Peterborough making the Cuddy Gardens the honorary final stop on their tour of excellent southwestern Ontario gardens. As expected, Pam's and Lisa's tours of the gardens were adored by all of the Master Gardeners. Many guests requested plants that were featured in the gardens such as the showy daylilies, alpine poppies from the alpine garden, and hostas from the Louise Weekes hosta collection. Many of them expressed a new-found love for the rarely-seen Cuddy grounds. The tour was a huge success! Not only did it give the students a unique opportunity to learn from Masters in the field with decades of experience, but it was also commented many times by the Gardeners that they were thrilled to interact with students passionate about their discipline. Additionally, the plant sale grossed approximately five hundred dollars which will contribute to the Horticulture Program and help us to maintain the beautiful grounds. 

Christmas in July

All hands on deck as the Spriet Family Greenhouse prepares for Christmas. Although Christmas is many months away,  preparation and care for our main fall crop (poinsettias) was this week’s focus.  After a week of cleaning and sanitizing the greenhouse, the pathogen free area was ready to receive over 700 plugs. Organization is key, with over fourteen boxes of ten different cultivars it can be very easy to accidentally mix up certain cultivars at such an early stage. The plugs are about one inch in height and were watered right away to relieve the stress of travel. They also dry out quickly due to being so little. Over seven hundred - six inch pots were flat filled with dry media enriched with mycorrhizae and then watered in to promote a consistent level for every pot. 

An ongoing project that a couple of students will be working on is monitoring and recording the growth rate of the Poinsettias. Carlee H. set up a backdrop with a measuring tape to be able to record a growth time lapse video by taking pictures of a sample poinsettia every week. 

Throughout the week the student gardeners focused on the gardens around the R3 residence. In the process of weeding, edging and mulching the students were introduced to friendly wildlife living on campus.

Hot Week in the Gardens and Greenhouse
July 8, 2018
Geoffrey T.

The heat this past week at Fanshawe College made working outside difficult, even in the shade if you were lucky enough to find it. The only real break from the heat is when a storm came through and dropped a large sum of water on us, good thing we were already soaked with sweat.  

The most of our time this week was spent at the Z campus gardens.

 As part of our ongoing garden maintenance routine we weeded and prepared the beds to receive mulch. Mulch being a major strategy in our weed control program, laying a thick layer of mulch around established plants prevents the weeds from germinating and creates a difficult environment for the weed to grow should it germinate.  After many full wheelbarrows and a few tractor loads we raked out all the beds leaving a clean mulched look. 

 In preparation for our incoming poinsettia crop, and since selling or planting out our spring annual crop, we emptied the greenhouse of all plants. With the greenhouse empty it was the perfect time to clean and sterilize the place, Emily braved the heat to get this done. With no plants in the greenhouse environmental controls are not needed to keep the greenhouse hospitable to plants, we use this time to allow the greenhouse heat up (over fifty degrees Celsius) to create a truly inhospitable environment for life.

Not only do we overheat any pest in the greenhouse during this process, we starve them by removing any food source. 

It is the time of year when we are getting treated with many colourful lilies; purples, pinks, yellows, oranges and reds.      

Summer Blog - July 1, 2018

Tobias E.

Last week was climbing into 40°C, so we knew this week we would be seeing the same. At the beginning of the season, we went through heat stress training which allows us to properly identify signs of heat exhaustion. This knowledge enabled us to recognize the necessity for water breaks throughout the day, allowing us to work through the heat in a safe manner. 

But our team members weren’t the only ones feeling the heat; the plants all around campus felt the rising temperatures. 

We made nearly daily use of the tractor & water tanker. The blue tint of the water is from the 20-20-20 fertilization used on campus. This allows for a balanced delivery of nitrogen (needed for healthy foliage growth), phosphorus (needed for strong root and flower development) and potassium (for general resiliency) to all the plants on campus.  With the diversity of garden beds around many populated areas on campus, parking the water tanker in safe areas was a challenge. The goal was to get as close to the target area as possible while minimizing impact on the surrounding traffic. The pylons around the water tanker were essential to ensure safety while moving around the tank.

One of the newly planted garden beds we set up was across from R2 Residence. Over the summer months, Fanshawe residences are used as hotels for various events. This week, Rowing Canada was visiting, so preparation of the grounds was necessary to maintain the pristine reputation of the grounds.  When we began, the bed was filled with hostas and mostly weeds, but upon completion, we planted a Redbud and a Beech tree, with a wide assortment of colorful bedding plants. We transplanted the hostas to another well suited area. We learned the most effective way to stake trees and the importance of using twine that degrade naturally over time, so as not to harm the tree and allow it to grow properly.

Another one of our recently planted garden beds is found outside the Student Wellness Centre, and is currently  in full bloom, with daisies and Coreopsis flowers. These present the Fanshawe colors proudly, in a fun contrast of white and red. Our technician Jeff was inspired to design a natural informal style garden, mixing various canopy heights, plants with long bloom times, evergreen and deciduous trees and shrubs to provide multi-seasonal texture and accentuate the surrounding environment. 

As we continue improving the aesthetics of the Fanshawe grounds we also meticulously cleaned and sterilized the greenhouse in anticipation for our poinsettia cuttings coming in next week!