Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Weekend Blog
By: Nick R, Jeff B
Date: Sun 13/16

                This weekend was a busy one. On Friday we spent most of our day helping out people and selling hydrangeas. We had many people ranging from Fanshawe employees to one very nice lady who came all the way from Dunnville. More notably we had a good friend of one of our professors come in to buy some hydrangeas. Most of our sales occurred between 10am – 2pm. Many people and trying to get the hydrangeas that looked best. By the end of day we had completely sold out of the blue varieties and were down to the pinks, as of today Sunday we are down to only one bench left!





During our small moments of free time Nik was working with Travis in the interiorscape, planting new plants. Most of them were destined for B Café and some for office planters. Nik then had to go and water them in thoroughly to ensure they would survive. Jeff was working hard in the greenhouse on cuttings, after the seedlings had been tended to.  We took cuttings of some Dichondra ‘Silver Falls’, Spanish snapdragons, & variegated pelargonium.




By time the day had finished both Nik and Jeff were exhausted and ready for some R&R. 

On Saturday we buckled down on the Marigolds.



We were tasked with removing the extra seedlings that had sprouted and repotting them in 1204 cell packs. We had to very carefully remove the seedlings without harming the roots, while on the flip side firming in the roots to keep very good root-to-media contact. We did find something interesting when examining the marigolds.




 We looked them over a few times to make sure we had gotten all the extra seedlings (2 per cell) and then we cleaned up checked our list and moved to the next task for the day. That took up most of our Saturday leaving us only half the day remaining. We spent the rest of the day taking cuttings and potting up succulents for the future students attending the upcoming open house. 


The last little bit of the day was spent potting up all the well-rooted cuttings.

As Sunday began with a cold gloomy day we did our best to keep spirits high. The daylight savings time just had thrown us off a little bit but we rose (pun intended) to the challenge. We began the morning with our routine walk of the crop and watering check. Not a whole lot was dry that morning since it was a cold and gloomy. We reorganized the benches to allow all of the seedlings and 1 gallon square pots to be consolidated and then proceeded to the washing the floors and equipment. We gave the trailer and good washing and the RTV’s the same. We swept the floors and dusted the window sills with minutes to spare.

The Sunday morning when we came in we noticed something that caught our attention. Since the daylight savings time started and sent us ahead an hour - when we came in the curtains were still closed. They only began to open after the first hour. So when the curtains were opening and what the computer though was “8am” it was actually 9am in the morning. The curtains I noticed had been opening and closing slightly all night long. Greenhouse temperatures remained very stable through the night and only began to rise as the curtains opened. The temperature outside didn’t drop too much but at the same time didn’t come back up that much.




Our weekend was a hard fought but thorough one. We had to keep the greenhouse going during sales and during all that complete tasks given. Tasks to get the equipment ready for the following weekends as well as ready some of the machinery for use in practical classes.  We covered everything from general fertilization of the stock baskets and marigolds, to transplanting seedlings, we did it all. With teamwork and good critical thinking skills we were able to decipher the list given to us and complete all the assigned tasks. All and all was a good weekend and accomplished a lot. 







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