Weekend Duty Blog

November 25-27, 2017

By: Jenn and Zora

This weekend Jenn and I were running the greenhouse. We were given a list on tasks to complete by our teacher Sue. We were to reorganize Poinsettias, take down shade curtains, take out all emitters and clean them on the last 3 benches, as well as a various others tasks.

On Friday Jeff gave us a run down on where everything was. I had never used the Priva system before so it was interesting to see how it worked. The main task we tried to accomplish was reorganizing the Poinsettias so we could clear off the last 3 benches for the future Hydrangea crop. This took almost all day because we also had to serve customer who wanted to buy poinsettias and prepare a few special orders for that afternoon. On of the orders was for an event in Forwell Hall. They wanted 7 standard Poinsettias and 6 minis to have on stage. 

Saturday was very busy. Jenn and I tackled all the large tasks. In the morning we finished moving all the sold Poinsettias so we could remove all water emitters and lines from the benches. After that was done we proceeded to soak them in bleach and water.  In the afternoon I worked on installing all the lines and emitters, while Jenn took down the shade curtains. After the curtains were taken down we had to make sure we numbers each corner of each curtain so next year they will be easier to install. Installing the emitter and lines was quite tedious work. It took us almost 4 hours to get them installed because we had to reattach everything and crawl under the benches to feed the lines back thought the bench grating. I also watered the interiorscape plants. There were 3 Ficus with poinsettias as the understory planter in front for the bookstore, as well as 3 Gracena in the library. Through out the day we also had and four customers come in to buy Poinsettias. One couple in particular bought a poinsettia so they could try and make it into a poinsettia tree.

Sunday was the day we got all the odd jobs done. In the morning we finished up installing the emitter, washed pots, cleaned the floors. We also did Kalanchoe tip cuttings. We really enjoyed doing tip cutting because it was a break from greenhouse maintenance.

In the afternoon we tested the EC reading and pH levels in each variety of Poinsettia. After we collected Caster seeds and made stock baskets. There was an order of 15 Poinsettia for Monday morning. We put aside 7 reds, and 8 assorted. For the rest of the afternoon we cleaned and organized.

It was a very busy weekend for Jenn and I but we managed to get all of it done. We had a lot of fun, worked well as a team and learned a lot.