Greenhouse Weekend Blog

Yujing and Kate

October 16-18, 2015

 

The core area of our horticulture program –the lovely greenhouse is the just place we have been waiting for long to work all by ourselves. Luckily, we find this precious opportunity to further our study and work experience in here. Our local weather has been temperamental lately since the approach of winter brings cold weather. It seems like the roots of many outdoor plants have already started to "rest" in their dormant period. However, in our greenhouse it is always spring all the year around. Most greenhouse plants are very sensitive to large or sudden changes in temperature. That is why we always put the temperature as the particularly crucial thing to consider.

 

Day 1: Even though the cold and windy weather almost drove us crazy, it still could not stop our enthusiasm to learn. After we finished the four sections of CLT, everyone was happy to go and celebrated as a champion with delicious beers, and yet it was our time to go back to the main campus and started our weekend duty as a fresh new day. I never went through such a busy day, but it is definitely a good way to promote ourselves mentally, physically, emotionally, as well as spiritually. As we got there, our teachers helped us to go over the overall process about the greenhouse management. I shouldn’t have missed such a valuable time to learn, so I recorded carefully for all the details. I went out to work with Jamieson to dig out all the tropical plants which we planted in the containers and plant beds before, because they wouldn’t survive at all during the winter.

 

 

In this race for time game, me and Jamieson found tons of potatoes from an inconspicuous container. At first, we were quite confused about these red strange rhizomes and a taxi driver who was smoking beside us said that ‘they are sweet potatoes.’ I suddenly felt a little bit embarrassed because we just got our plant identification test done, and yet we didn’t recognize that what were they. Maybe we just didn’t want to believe that there was editable plants suddenly appearing in an unbelievable place. Thoughts are habitual and some time they are difficult to overcome. What we need to do is to get off the prescribed path and make your own. Anyway, we had to cut all the stems of the Pennisetum sataceum ‘Rubrum’ (common name: Red Fountain Grass) and served them a comfortable place to get ready to winter. During the time of pruning, I started to think about many things. All of those distant memories of the plants came flooding back to me, such as my magpie habit about roses and orchids, the first time to transplant 1000 poinsettias with my dear co-workers and even my grandmother’s backyard which was overgrown by Zephyranthes candida (whiter wind flower), and how much I was bonded with them. Repetitive work needs more patient than you think especially in the greenhouse. I guess this is a good method to find your own enjoyment.

 

 

Day 2: We had the first snowy day of 2015 on Saturday. Time passes quickly like a white pony's shadow across a crevice. I’m glad that I am the second year student now. In the morning, me and Kate went out site by site to find out those tropical plants from the containers and plant beds, and brought them back to the greenhouse. We didn’t want to waste any time, because nobody else wanted to see an icy plant on the road. When we saw a mountain of cannas and fountain grasses just piled in front of us at the greenhouse, we almost had nervous breakdowns. Are you kidding me? So, we had to take steps to speed up a solution to this problem. We used every method we could to achieve the goal and even didn’t notice the time and relax. It was not easy at all to identify these cannas’ cultivars, but we had already tried our best. What a hectic day, but it was worthy.

 

 

Day 3: We started to move the succulents from two sides of greenhouse to the front bench and gave them a good organization, and then settled them by the same family. Plants’ family names always reveal a lot of information. For some simple examples, most of the plants which come from Rosaceae family are edible and their flowers are very stunning. Most Ranunculacea family’s plants are poisonous with showy flowers. Anyhow, we won’t discuss more about biological evolution. As a true plant lover, we can focus on the details about the plants and get a lot of fun from them. Cleaning is one of the most important things in our greenhouse. I really want to design a kind of intelligent cleaner which can finish a full-automatic cleaning one day, because it will set us free from the endless daily cleaning. We must be meticulous for this task, and the reason is not just for a good-looking surrounding, but mainly for the IPM (integrated pest management). Keep in mind that precaution is always the best way for a healthy plant!