Maintenance Practical Blog
Chad, Johnny and Ben
October 10-12, 2014

Autumn is here and it’s time to start getting those gardens cleaned up and weed free. To start off our Friday, it was time to gather all the tools necessary to tackle this task and head down to Z building. Jeff came and did a walk-through of the site to provide further details on our tasks for the weekend. After completing some weeding it was time to head out to Strathroy for Certified Landscape Technician (CLT) testing. Upon returning from the morning CLT testing, further weeding was completed.

The majority of Saturday consisted of weeding. Johnny came along with the tractor and trailer to assist us in our tasks for today. There was a significant amount of weeds in all the beds. We started systematically by working from the far end of the building along Oxford Street and worked our way north. We focused on one bed at a time and split up and worked toward each other. There were numerous weeds including Lactuca serriola (PricklyLlettuce), Convolvulusarvensis (Field Bindweed), Taraxacum officinale (Dandelions), and Equisetum arvense (Horsetail) to name a few. It looks like the weeds have enjoyed the weather this summer as there were some areas in the garden beds where you could barely see mulch for the weeds! It was important to ensure that the entire weed including the root system was pulled to prevent the weeds from returning. We used a variety of tools to assist us in removing the weeds including ahand trowel, garden fork, and our new weeding fork from Cuddy’s. We also used a rake afterwards to ensure that we left the site looking great, or as Tim says “make it look like you were never there”. After working on weeding for a while we decided to tackle the removal of the dead Taxodium distichum ‘Cascade Falls’ (Cascade Falls Bald Cypress). This was a difficult task, as the roots were large and well established. The tree fought a good fight but with perseverance and hard work we managed to win the battle. Creating a large hole in the soil which we properly backfilled and cleaned up around.

 

 It was then time to complete another task of removing the Treegator® watering bags from all the trees around Z building. The watering bags were a low maintenance, efficient tool used to provide water to the trees over the summer. We had trouble removing some of the bags due to the locks being seized with rust. We removed any remaining water from the bags and put them in the trailer. We then continued with weeding until the end of the day and walked back to the greenhouse. 

 

We began our final day with a heavy frost! The day started off cold but quickly warmed up. We continued with our taskof weeding, finishing with the north bed. While completing this weeding, some women walked by and commented onhow lovely the flowers look when they walk by every day. This was nice to hear and figured we would pass on thispraise! Once the weeding was complete, we moved onto edging along the front of the building facing Oxford. We did this using a string line on the straight edge of the bed to ensure a straight line was accomplished. Next we raked all the mulch up and out of our way. One person made the cut with the half moon, followed by another with the spade to remove the unwanted turf, followed by another with the dutch hoe to break up the large chunks of soil and even it out. We then used the vertical edger to create a clean finished edge and then raked down and evened out the mulch.

 

 

We also brought WD40 to assist with the removal of five Treegator® bags that had seized locks, this worked great! We spent some time as well rinsing the soil off of the Treegator® bags so they could be stored for winter. We also sprayed WD40 on all the locks so they wouldn’t seize up over the winter from rust, to ensure they function properly next year. Another important task in cleaning up our site was removing all the garbage and debris from Z building, which there was a lot of! We also cleaned up the tree wells along Oxford Street. It was the end of our weekend so we headed back to the equipment room to clean off our tools and this was the end of our rewarding weekend at Z building!