Weekend Maintenance Practical Blog
September 12-14, 2014

                What a wonderful weekend to start out work on the Friday morning with nothing better than warm and sunny weather. I was a little nervous starting the weekend not knowing what to expect, especially being the first group through. It was nice to have Jeff walk through everything that needed to be done for the weekend in the morning. With this I could prioritize what order things should get done first during the rest of the weekend. Starting off in the Carolinian forest, I was to edge out the previous tree well and expend them to cover most of the drip line. Some of the trees looked like they could use a little tidy up as well. As the day kept proceeding forward it seemed as if the day was passing by rather quickly. It was a good memory booster with the plant id. Testing myself before getting to the tree, thinking what was the botanical and common name of the tree I am coming up to.

 

After edging and weeding all of the tree wells it was time to put mulch down around the freshly edged tree wells. Before being able to lay the mulch down I had to go and get the Kubota tractor from the tractor bay. This allowed me to get practice driving the equipment here at the college and becoming more comfortable driving the heavy machinery. It was good practice having to load the trailer full of mulch with the tractor bucket. Using skills I was taught in previous courses I was able to fill the trailer without having any difficulty or troubles along my way. While working out in the rain on Saturday morning I got to experience what it is like to be in the landscaping field. Not taking time off because of the weather outside and I learned to be prepared to work in any situation. Also with this I learned that you are sometimes forced to work in situations that you do not want to but that comes along with the job title. While all this mulching and edging was going on it gave me a good chance to search for any pest that were within the tree.

 

During this working weekend I was able to improve on some of my work skills and continue to get better on them. Being able to develop these skills and improve on them is going to help me along my way in becoming a horticulture technician. With working by myself all weekend I realize how long some tasks can actually take during the day and that prioritizing your work load can help reduce some of the running around time that is so precious to waste. All and all it was a good weekend of learning and a good experience of gaining hand on knowledge of some aspects in the horticulture industry.