Weekend Blog

Justin and Soyoung

September 30 - October 2, 2017

            Friday afternoon Soyoung and I got our weekend duties to complete. Our duties for the weekend were to finish edging the Conifer garden that we rototilled that same week. We also had to rake the same garden since it rained the same day so it became compacted and had lots of lumps in it. We raked the entire garden to get the remaining sticks and make the soil fluffy. After that that I began to take the half moon around the make the garden as nice as possible after that the pruners came in handy for all the overhanging grass.

After the Conifer garden was completed we began to work on our major project for the weekend which was weeding and mulching a garden by the greenhouse. As we were scoping the garden bed we realised we had lots of work to do. We came up with a game plan and decided we will need a couple of buckets for the weeds and a couple hand trowels for the weeds with the big bulky roots. As we began to work on the left side of the garden we noticed that most of the slope we were working on for the first day was just covered in weeds and we knew we had a big job ahead of us. We didn’t get very far as 5 o’clock was coming up and we still has to wash the tools we were using and put the RTV away. Once that was completed we signed both of our radios and I singed out my keys. It was right on 5 so we signed out and went home for the night.

Day 2 we got to the greenhouse at 7:40 and waited to sign in to start our day. We signed and completed to circle check on the RTV that we would be using for the day. We drove over to the tool shed to get a couple of buckets a fan rake, hard rake, a couple of trowels, a few different shovels and we had our pruners. Our plan for day 2 was to get all or close to all of the weeds in the garden bed we were working on pulled and driven back to the compost pile. We were weeding for the whole day and as it reached near the end of the day we had completed 90% of the weeds being pulled. Again it was the end of the day so we cleaned our tools and put the RTV away in the shop. Signing in and out the radio and keys was a daily thing that had to be done at the beginning and end of each day.

Day 3 is the day we got to have some fun. We signed in for the day and got our radios and keys that we needed. I sent Soyoung to get the tools we will be needing for the day like a hard rake, a fan rake, a shovel, two pitch forks and two wheel barrows. While she was doing that I went to get the tractor with the trailer and complete the circle check. I drove it over to the compound and radioed Soyoung to meet me over there. Once she got there I started to unhook the trailer so I can use the tractor to fill it up with mulch. I ran into some problems trying to unhook the trailer as the jack would not crank up so I could get the ball out and drive the tractor away. Since I was unable to figure out what was going wrong I decided I would drive back to C building with Soyoung and get the second tractor. I completed that circle check and was on my way back to the compound to load up the trailer with mulch so we could start mulching the garden. Once the trailer was loaded up I drove it back to the greenhouse as it was a good place to park it so we weren’t too far away. I thought the mulching part of the job would only take a couple of hours but I was wrong it almost took all day since there were so many small places that it needed to be put down. We finished mulching at 3:45 and we began cleanup of the grounds. Seeing as mulch was everywhere we used a broom to sweep it up and shovel the left overs into low spots. We swept away all the dirt on the paths as much as we could. Now it was time to wash down out tools that we used so Soyoung was doing that I took the tractor over to the hose and sprayed it down to get the mud off the tires and floor and sprayed a little of the trailer off as it was not to muddy. I did this for both tractors and gassed only one tractor up because the other tractor was still on the full mark. They were put away as same as the tools and the RTV. We signed in our keys and radio and were done for the day.

I found weekend duty to be a very good experience. It gave me a chance to drive the tractors and get some quality experience with them. All in all our garden bed came out the way I planned it and I couldn’t be more happy.