Courtney's Blog for July 15-19

July 19^th, 2013:

Courtney Preszcator-

It is a hot one this week!! I hope all of you have been staying safe and cool, here at the College we’ve been attempting to hide in the shade as much as possible! Work needs to be done though so we toughed it out! First things first, we received our Poinsettia crop on Monday and boy were we excited. This year we’re working on 1000 Poinsettia’s from 9 different cultivars: Christmas Beauty Nostalgia, Christmas Feeling Marble, Christmas Season Marble, Classic Red, Polar Bear, Pollys Pink, Prestige Maroon, Prestige Red, and last but not least Valentine. As soon as you receive any shipment you must ALWAYS check your product. You should make sure everything is accounted for and that no plant is damaged. We also like to check the roots to make sure they are a nice healthy white colour.



Look at that healthy root system!

The next process on Tuesday was for half of us to pot up 500 Poinsettia’s in the morning and for the other half of us to pot up the remaining 500 in the afternoon (in this heat the greenhouse temperature is ranging from 35-40 degrees!). Challenge accepted Jeff!

We started by filling up the pots with our media and then watering all of them down before placing the Poinsettia’s in their new homes.

Then we started placing the Poinsettia’s! Always trying to keep production moving swiftly (haha) we developed a good routine and pace for potting.

And the finished product looks great. We’re aiming for one of the best crops of Poinsettia’s to date (Go us!).

(Dylan "Darcy" Howlett and Hilary are heading up the Poinsettia crop and clearly they love their Poinsettia's!)

We like to keep all of you following us on our Blog in the loop with what we tackle on a weekly basis here on the main campus so I feel I should mention our groundhog family that has hunkered down on campus. You may drive past and see one briefly run back into their hole or maybe you have been lucky enough to witness one of them sunbathing (yes, they like to keep tanned as well!). As cute as they are they tend to make a lot of work for us! It often brings back memories of the movie Caddy Shack! There I go again getting off track! Back to business Courtney...

We have gorgeous specimens of Wisteria vines as well as a grafted Wisteria tree here on main campus and seeing as it is July it is time to prune them back! The rule of thumb is that you should prune Wisteria in March and then again in July/August. For our July pruning we took some of the longer growth, traced them back to old growth, then counted 10 buds down the new growth and made our cut. The first and most important rule to pruning is to Know What You Are Pruning! (That way you know when to prune as well as how to prune!) Majority of the team took part in this task.

(Darcy up in the Wisteria in the Woodland Garden)

(Eric Stacey and Dylan "DMC" Mcleod helping out with pruning the Wisteria Vine)

(The Wisteria vine after being pruned)

(The Wisteria tree after being pruned)

After this brutally hot week at Fanshawe we are ALL glad to be going into the weekend. The heat wave has worn us out! Make sure you’re covered in sunscreen for the weekend and if it’s cool enough take a walk to enjoy all of the beautiful plants in bloom! Oh, and for any of you wondering how our Mum crop is doing...they’re filling out nicely and seem to be happy. The roots are even starting to grow through the bottom of the pots which is always a sign of a happy plant with a very happy root system!

Almost forgot! A very Happy Birthday goes out to one of our co-workers, Eric Stacey.

(Eric opening his gift from the team!)