Greenhouse weekend duty blog

October 14-16, 2017

Mike Dobie Scott Pollock

On Friday October 14th I and Mike Dobie arrived back to the Fanshawe greenhouse at around 1:55 pm to begin our weekend duty. Our day was cut short because of the CLT training taking place at Cuddy's gardens in Strathroy and so this day was mainly focused on reviewing the tasks with Jeff and doing a thorough walk through of the Poinsettia crop. We took time to introduce a biological (spider mites) using 2 shaker-like containers n sprinkling over the crops evenly until the whole greenhouse was complete.

On the Saturday (the 15th) we arrived to the greenhouse and began the day with the planting of some cuttings from the propagation chambers. These plants included: Fuchsia arborescens, Begonia foliosa, Cuphea melvilla, Euphorbia cotinifolia and Begonia Rex. We did this using the rooting hormone and potting soil.

Once we walked through the entire greenhouse to check on the watering condition of the poinsettias we spot watered using the fertilizer and removed any dead foliage. We also used some potting soil to top up several of the pots which seemed to be getting too low as the root ball of the poinsettias was being exposed. Once all of the greenhouse plants were taken care of (including those in the holding bay outside) we began moving the plants around which were asked of us. This included moving the big tree poinsettias to the first bench (Bench A), moving the Christmas Beauty Marble poinsettias from the back of bench B to the front, and replacing those beauty marbles with the medium sized poinsettias. The minis and succulents were grouped together along the side bench and watered using the tray method (absorbing the fertilizer from the bottom up. Once all of these plants were taken care of we headed out in the RTV for some hand watering of the Chrysanthemums. This ended up taking up a greater part of the day then we had anticipated because of how dry the mums were and how many buckets of water we needed to go through. We filled up the buckets with just water at the various watering stations along the sides of the campus using the key provided. Once the watering was done we headed over to Saffrons to deal with some plants in that area. One plant needed to be repotted into a larger sized pot and under planted with spider plants, we ended up using all 10 for this plant. Once it was all planted we brought it back to its home and proceeded to maneuver the surrounding plants into a layout as provided by Jeff. This included moving two fake plants closer to the doors of Saffron (the fake plants can handle the dropping temperatures), moving a tropical closer to the main restaurant doors and cleaning up debris.

On Sunday we arrived to a cooler greenhouse then the previous days, this was due to the overcast and on/ off showers. Most of the crop required little to no water, but there were still some that needed it. When we finished this we headed straight to the garage to work on the elephant ears. Some of the foliage needed to be pruned back (mainly the yellow dying foliage) and it was crucial we did our best in not exposing too much of the root system while we put them into bigger black crates. We used potting soil to cover them up, and then stacked them into one of the rolling shelve units. Once this was done there was a lot of debris and dirt everywhere, we cleaned this up using the leaf blower and a broom, although we knew we would need it again after what was to follow. What was to follow was a deconstruction of the shelving units and all of the pots/ trays it holds. We took down all of the pots/ trays to get an approximate number for inventory and then dusted the shelves off before stacking them back up. This inventory included : At least 600- 4” pots (square), 650- 4.5” pots (square), 150- red 4” pots (circular), 700- 6” Azalea pot, 480- 6” tall pots, 1200 1 gallon square pots, 1300 4” round Azalea, 1200 orange round specialty plants pots, 550- 6” round, 2400- 4” red circular, 375- 7” round special pots, 545- 4x2 square flats, 200- heavy webbed flats, 850 light webbed flats, 150- 3” deep flat, 100- miscellaneous pots. Once the damage was all recorded and the numbers were down on paper we took the RTV out to the Oxford and first street entrance to take care of some more Mum watering that needed attention. Once again we cleaned out the garage of all the shelf debris and proceeded inside to finish up some interiorscape duties outside of the bookstore. This was mainly just watering/ cleanup of the Mums.

All in all it was a very productive weekend filled with tasks and lessons to be learned, we completed all that we could and even learned a thing or two.