Greenhouse Weekend Duty 

Sebastian and Jamieson

January 29, 2016

It was a crisp fine Friday morning. The day started off with the regular opening checklist of the greenhouse - checking of the temperatures, recording the Priva graphs etc., All of this took a short period of time.  Jeff gave us a list of verbal instructions of what to do for the weekend and we took notes and were left to our own fate. Only time will tell if we nailed it. Our first objective for operation “weekend duty” was to adjust the rollers that the benches sit on in the greenhouse. Starting with bench one, Jim went to the far end and I stayed on the other end. With rubber mallets we slowly adjusted the rollers to the correct places. Once we finished the first we moved on to the next one until all the benches were adjusted. The first objective was completed so it was on to the second mission. A lesson in sowing seed by Jeff. Filling 2 trays of 288 cell trays with ProMix PGX plug mix and compacting it to a firm level we were ready to sow. Using our trusty high tech tool the vibrating seeder, we distributed 200 seeds each of Ornamental Pepper for a total of 400 seeds. Babying them right we should end up with a 99% success rate with light cover and a nice soaking of the trays we placed them on the heating tray and placed on plastic covers to retain moisture.

After this was completed, I figured with Jeff leaving soon it would be a good idea to gain access to the chemical storage locker. The CHERRY SPARKLER FOUNTAIN GRASS wasn’t rooting fast enough so I made up some fertilizer batches of one tablespoon of 10-52-10 in 4L in the watering cans and watered the CHERRY SPARKLER FOUNTAIN GRASS. While I was accomplishing this task Jim was cleaning the propagation chamber ridding it of an algae infestation. To our surprise we were once again on to the next task. So we teamed up and took on a whole new evil - the stock basket pull down and sort by genus. So Jim using the pull down tool which in my opinion looks like an over sized plunger brought them down as I placed them on the rolling benches. Once those were down we started sorting the stock baskets and hanging baskets by genus alphabetically. Once this task was near completion the day was nearing its end. So we starting doing or ending of the day check list and called it a day.

January 30, 2016

I was on my way in to grab the keys off the security office and the power goes out for a total of what seemed two milliseconds shortly after that the vending machines started going all haywire and the things were literally possessed and retrieving and delivering ghost orders. When coming upon the security office they were in a frenzy and the office was understaffed and they were busy trying to get back online and operational. The office said that the alarm might go off and trigger the system because of the little power failure so the security guard said he’d come disarm it. As we exited the college to go to the greenhouse he asked “are you driving” reluctantly I said “no I’m still riding the heel toe express” he chuckled and said “well here at Fanshawe we have technology and pointed to his campus security car. Upon arriving at the greenhouse security let us in and disarmed the alarm I said “thank you” and he left to do his duties. The first objective for operation ‘weekend duty’ was to sort through the cannas and group them accordingly while taking inventory of what was there. When we were done with the sorting of the cannas we moved on to evenly spacing the hydrangeas and pruning out what needed to be pruned.

With this out of the way I started placing plastic with double sided tape to hold in heat from underneath of the far back bench. When I was done Jim consolidated all the standard poinsettias on the far back bench. We emptied the hydroponics tub and consolidated those water plants into some big pots. Feeling well accomplished we started labeling and making a sign for the succulents and little pot for sale in the greenhouse.

With all this work being accomplished we lost track of time and soon enough it was time for close up and end of the day checklist and such.

January 31, 2016

Upon arriving on our final day we felt a sense of mourning. Our last day of greenhouse duty had struck a chord in the hearts of these horticulture students. First thing on the list was opening checklist. This day was reserved for the cleaning aspect of the greenhouse and writing and preparing of the blog. The cleaning of the greenhouse consisted of the sweeping and washing of the floors, cleaning the windowsills, picking dead foliage from the benches and cleaning out of the dirt catchers. After all the hard core cleaning of the greenhouse we tended to the more soft core cleaning of wiping down the tables, shelves and computer area and cleaning of the fridge. The task being well accomplished we started the preparation of our blog paper. After completion of the blog we did our end of the day checklist.