Greenhouse Weekend Blog

Oct 28, 29, 30. 2016

Friday – In the AM on Friday morning we reported to Jeff for the weekend duty requirements. We started off by going over different things that may come up during out duty, like emergency contacts, different tasks that must be done every day etc. Jeff then took us around the greenhouse to go over the weekend duty checklist which consisted of many different things we had to check on. For example, the heating under the pipes, for breaks in any of the windows, if plants needed watering and much more. As we were finishing that up it was time to do our first crop walk. We started on one end with each of us at either ends of a table and worked our way around the crop checking if the poinsettia’s needed watering, any disease or insects we can spot, cleaning out dead foliage and properly spacing them. Although that took us some time to complete we had a job to do over at Z building with Jeff and another student gardener. We were tasked to help with moving around some of the large planters and adding media to the pots as well. This did not take long which is good because we had many other tasks to complete on our list. When we got back we were sent off by ourselves and we started to compost and take cuttings of the plants located in the holding area. Any plants that needed cuttings we added to the batch of already made cuttings and the rest got composted. We had to make cuttings of Sage, Lemon Thyme and Peppermint and managed to get 8 cuttings out of each plant. Jin went on to start washing the immense amount of pots while I (Amadeo) started to work on putting the Cannas and elephant ears in bulb crates.

The day was coming to an end and we started to clean up around the greenhouse, washing all the floors and taking the compost to the compound.

Saturday – The morning started off fairly warm and the greenhouse was still all in one piece and the crops were doing fine. We started the morning as per usual with the circle check sheet, we went over all the things on the list and everything was in order. The only issue we found was that the temperature in the morning was sitting below the recommended level but increased over time to the proper levels. We did a standard plant walk and continued on with our list of jobs to be done. First on the list was to water the mini poinsettias. Each tray got 1 litre and a half of fertilized water which we left in the trays for a while to let the poinsettias soak up. Once we made a judgement that they drank enough we emptied all the trays. Today was a watering day and we were watering almost everything in and outside of the greenhouse. After the minis we misted the cuttings in the greenhouse and in the propagation chamber (we do this 3 times a day everyday), then grabbed the Aquamate and headed into the school for some interiorscape watering and general cleanup. First on the list was to water the 3 large planters in front of the bookstore, we used almost all the water for the 3 since they were so large but had enough left over to water the rest. We moved onto the B café planters and checked them, then to T building hallway and checked all the tropical down the hall. This took us majority of our time considering all the walking we had to do. Once we got back, we called security control to send someone over to open the Presidents secretaries’ office because we had to swap out a Ficus with another healthier one. Didn’t take long for them to be there and we were in and out fairly quickly. It was getting close to the end of the day and we started to clean out the greenhouse again. We added in cleaning the tractor bay to the list since it needed it.

Then moved onto washing the floors and doing the closing checklist.

Sunday – The final day of our weekend duty was a slow day, but was a full blown cleaning day. We started as usual with our checklist and crop walk, spot watering poinsettias, misting the cuttings and watering anything else that needed it. At this point we forgot we had to do one final task as Z building which was washing down a planted because it was infested with mealy bug. We got to Z building and it was locked preventing us from doing so, so we had to drive back and leave it for someone else. We got back and immediately started cleaning up the place, starting in the greenhouse by washing and sweeping the whole area making it spotless. We didn’t have much else to do so we did 8 more cuttings of the grasses as that was what could fit on the heating mat. We finished off with the checklist and closed up for the last time.