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!