Gardens of Fanshawe College Blog by: Courtney Preszcator & Evan Macadams

 

Friday January 24^th, 2014:

 

It was our first weekend practical since being back from winter break. There were obvious concerns about being a little “rusty” with the daily duties inside the Fanshawe College greenhouse. As we walked through the greenhouse doors all concerns were pushed aside with the thought of being able to spend the next 3 days doing what we love!

 

Before we started our opening checklist, Jeff gave us a run through of the tasks needed to be done over the weekend and pointed out some issues in the greenhouse that needed immediate TLC (tender, love and care)!! From the sounds of what we were going to be doing this weekend it was going to be a lot of cultural care for our plants! We were heading in to start on our beautification of the Banana plants that required some pruning. But wait! Through the greenhouse window we could see the arrival of our lumber that’s going to be used for our Landscape Field Construction class (spoiler alert!). We geared up and tromped through the snow to help Jeff unload the shipment. The wind seemed to be picking on us even hidden between the H and M buildings and burning our cheeks so we moved fast! With the fluctuations in temperatures and not wanting to move the lumber from place to place we decided to tarp it where it was by the Horticulture Technician tool room. We were glad to be done and hurried back to the warm greenhouse to continue where we had left off (with the Banana plants).

 

Now when you think of pruning you are picturing us removing dead or unattractive growth. You would be correct in that assumption. The pruning we were doing on the Banana plant was almost like the peeling of the layers of an onion. If you’re not familiar with Banana (Genus: Musa) plants they are tropical plants whose stems are actually just layers of leaf stalks! Beginning to understand the onion layers analogy? These leaf stalks also act as structural support for the plant. Make sure to be careful not to remove too many layers when pruning or you will weaken your plants stem.

         

For those of you following the Gardens of Fanshawe College blog you will know that we recently attended and did an incredible Mediterranean build at the Landscape Ontario Congress. The display was beautiful but the behind-the-scenes situation is a lot of nursing our plants used in the build back to health! We went through the entire greenhouse and checked to see if any watering was needed and came to the conclusion we need to re-pot some of our stock plants used at Congress. The end result was well worth the meticulous care. A high five after a job well done and we were headed home for the night.

              

 Saturday January 25^th, 2014:

 

What a horrible drive to work it was this morning! The fact that we are in the Horticulture Technician program should hint at what our favourite season is (we’ll give you a hint it isn’t winter). Thank goodness for being inside the greenhouse! We formed a game plan, put our tunes on and got to work. Shortly into the morning Jrow (Jessica Rowland) arrived to do some interiorscape care. We gladly took the chance to help her transplant some tropical plants. It would have been a sight to see if she had attempted to move these large trees herself. We don’t doubt she would have gotten it done. It would have taken some muscle and a little creative thinking.

 

Our afternoon was full of pink! ....Pink Hydrangeas that is. We have a saying in our program, “The hand that holds the hose controls the crop”. So we were going through our Hydrangea crop and amending the soil levels in the pots to allow for water to be absorbing into the soil but not overflowing. A good tip from Michael Pascoe is to leave at least the tip of your index finger of space between the top of the soil and the rim of the pot. Taking care to center our labels and straighten our rows on the drip-lines along the way. While the Hydrangeas were being tended to we were also flushing the drip-lines on our empty benches with a bleach/water mixture. All of the drip-lines managed to get a good cleaning. Cleaning is a huge component of a successful greenhouse. Somehow we managed to unload two metal carts with bulb crates full of Canna’s. We watered them in to start in the process of breaking dormancy.

 Sunday January 26^th, 2014:

After such an exciting weekend to describe we get to the day of the week that almost everyone ends up doing the exact same thing. Cleaning. We were thorough. The benches were rinsed off, the floors were washed and the ledges were cleaned with a bleach/water solution to disinfect and clean at the same time. The tractor bay received a good scrub with some degreaser too! After all of the cleaning and dusting (we may have upset some spiders) it was time to go home. Or to be more specific, it was time to clean the snow off of our cars so that we could go home.

 

Bring on Summer!

Greenhouse Practical Blog - Jordan and Corey

January 17-19, 2014

Friday Jan 17

We started our weekend off by taking down the remaining blackout curtains from the greenhouse. This proved to be a difficult task maneuvering our ladder to allow us to reach the top curtains. After conquering the curtains we pruned back a significant amount of the foliage on the Schefflera that had been damaged by the cold on the trip to congress. We were also tasked to prune and train the Poinsettia standard to a more rounded form.

 

After this we took several crates of Alocasia and proceeded to clean them and lay them out along the bench to allow them to continue to dry out. We then started and finished our most daunting task of the day which was re-potting the Hydrangea’s from 4” pots into 6” pots which proved to be time consuming.  

 

Saturday Jan 18

As we completed our morning checklist we discovered that the propagation chamber at the far end of the greenhouse was below temperature. We discovered that the heating mat wasn’t producing any heat so we re-organized the potting room propagation chamber and moved the flats into it to keep them warm. We then proceeded to clean the benches by removing all of the infested and dying Lamb’s Ears and Lungwort making space for our stock plants. Once we had opened up some space on the benches we organized and grouped together all of the hanging baskets. Unfortunately the snow removal crews struck again and snapped a small Ginko tree at the base. We removed the tree and composted it but unfortunately the ground was frozen solid and we were unable to remove the stakes. Our final task for the day was to take the various remaining poinsettias and prune them into standards which was a fun learning experience for both of us.

 

 

Sunday Jan 19

After completing our opening checklist we inspected the drip nozzles on all of the remaining open benches for damaged or clogged drippers. Once we had checked the drippers we began to move the majority of the tropical plants onto the bench and inserting drippers. We also removed damaged foliage and performed some routine maintenance on the tropical as we moved them to their new home. With this completed the greenhouse was looking a bit more neat and organized than when we started.

 

 

We finished up our day by cleaning out the trailer and the tool room from congress, cleaning up our mess in the greenhouse and learning how to operate the seeding machine. When everything was said and done we had a very productive weekend and completed all of our tasks!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

Weekend Practical Blog

Jessica Rowland & Dylan McLeod

 

Jan. 10, 14 - Jan. 12, 14

Well, school’s finally back in and the greenhouse practical’s have begun! The second year Horticulture technicians came back early to set up our Congress display in Toronto, which for this weekend left Dylan and JRow the duty of trying to organize the greenhouse once again. Some of the duties that were left included organizing and placing the Congress plants on drip lines, removing the mulch left inside the pots, and leaving the greenhouse spotless. 

On Friday January 10, 2014 Fanshawe College got its first hydrangea crop in.  For our first step with the hydrangeas,’ we got the 4 inch pots out of their boxes and into the greenhouse with one drip line in each of the pots. The plan for the crop is to be transplanted into larger pots such as a 6 inch or 1 gallon but first our fearless leader Mr. Pascoe wants to inspect the crop to determine the best course of action. 

  

On Saturday January 11, 2014 Dylan and JRow potted up spider plants that were in 4 pack cells to 4 inch pots.  Once we were done potting up the spider plants and reorganizing the propagated cacti, we cleaned up the Alocasia's. After lunch we took to the task of starting our cleanup of the greenhouse floor and potting room. After a little elbow grease, our hard work payed off with the greenhouse in mint condition for the beginning of 2014!

 

 

On Sunday January 12, 2014 we started to take down the shade curtains since our poinsettias are finished for this year. After this Dylan and JRow split up to conquer as many of our tasks as possible. While JRow was seeing to some Interiorscape issues such as culture and watering, Dylan was doing some finishing clean up touches. Later on in the day the Dracaena that we took to Congress needed to be stabilized due to all the moving, so Dylan got to play Tarzan while JRow packed soil.  Overall, we had a great weekend!