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!