Weekend Duty Blog!

Todd Neerhof & Eric Patterson

Friday, April 1, 2016

 The first day of Eric and Todd’s weekend duty did not quite go as planned. Not only did they not show up to the greenhouse on time, when they finally arrived (shortly after noon) what they found was horrific! The greenhouse doors had been smashed in by a burglar and the entire crop that was growing in the greenhouse was decimated. Jeff Rowley was nowhere to be found and neither Eric nor Todd had the slightest clue of what to do. Both Eric and Todd were stricken with grief when they thought of all of the exciting learning opportunities they were missing out on. They needed to fill hanging baskets with Promix so they could transplant the plugs that had just been shipped to the greenhouse. They would have filled 700 4” pots in preparation for the shipment of annual plugs that are coming to the greenhouse in a few weeks. Finally, Eric and Todd were planning on potting up a flat of Elephant Ear plugs that came in earlier that day. They also wanted to spend time cleaning the greenhouse to make it look good for the open house that Fanshawe was hosting tomorrow. If they had gotten to do what they wanted and the greenhouse wasn’t completely destroyed, it would have looked something like the pictures below. Ultimately it was an extremely stressful day for the two young men. If only it wasn’t April Fools!

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Saturday was the day of Fanshawe’s open house. With the greenhouse so immaculately cleaned from the day prior; Eric and Todd finished their morning duties quickly, while maintaining a high standard of work.  In the morning they both worked on potting up the Pennisetum into 1 gallon square pots until the volunteer crew showed up to prepare for the open house. When the volunteer group arrived they switched their focus to representing the school and program well. This took up most of Eric and Todd’s day. They were helping the volunteers talk to people who are interested in the horticulture program at Fanshawe. When Eric and Todd finished with helping out in the open house they started potting up the Geraniums into 1 gallon square pots. This took them until the end of the day, when they started their closing checklist and closed the cash register. Both Eric and Todd really enjoyed the experience at the open house. Highlight day of their weekend duty.

Sunday, April 3, 2016

On Sunday when Eric and Todd got to work, they started with finishing off the Geraniums that still needed to be potted up from Saturday. After they finished with that, they cleaned up the Dichondra that had some dead stems inside of them. They also moved some of the Dichondra into the correct size of 4 cell trays and put them underneath the cheese cloth.  Eric was sure to use a misting head for the Dichondra to create an environment underneath the cheesecloth that is very humid. They potted up the Peperomia into the orange pots that are used for succulents. While potting up the Peperomia, they realized that there were no labels in them. Wanting to do the job correctly, Todd searched online to find the common and Latin names of the different kinds of Peperomia. As the day was coming to a close they organized the benches a bit to keep all of the same sized pots together and to have the same Genus of plants together. This makes it much easier for people in the future when they need to find a certain plant. In the end they both had an excellent weekend and learned a lot of very use full information.