Weekend Duty Blog - February 17-19, 2017

Lexi Drenth & Scott Pollock

            During our weekend duty, we learned a lot and did quite a bit. We will be going over what we did on each day, including when we opened and closed and a bit about the field trip on Friday.

            On Friday, both Scott and Lexi participated in the field trip to Landscape Ontario’s Plant Symposium at the Best Western Lamplighter Inn in London. During our breaks, we walked around and looked at all the ponds by the pool. We were looking at some plants that we just learned about in our Plant ID class a couple of weeks prior. At lunch, we discussed about leaving the field trip early to go back to the greenhouse and start our work early. We had a couple hours head start potting up the Supertunia plugs. After we put away our stuff, we didn’t do an efficient clean because we knew we were coming back tomorrow and making the same mess.

            On Saturday morning, we arrived at 7:45am and signed in and started thinking about how we were going to get through all the work within the next two days. After we walked the crop, we put our four sticky cards out throughout the crop. We started with going through the crop in the greenhouse to look for dry spots and/or imperfections with the crop, like wilting or broken leaves. We fertilized the hydrangea crop right in the morning so then we could test the EC and pH levels, but after we set up eight plants, we realized that we did not get our professors to get the deionized water out of the chemical storage closet before they left on Friday.  We called our supervisor for advice and realized we could not do it so we could not partake in doing these tests. We moved past that and we had all the Supertunia plugs to pot up in the four-inch pots. 

We made up a total of 605 pots with one plug in each and separated into trays based on their colours. We had ordered red and white, all based on Canada’s 150th Anniversary this summer. We were going through so much potting mix that we had to make up two extra bags of pro-mix. It took us up to lunchtime to finish and organize them. After lunch, Lexi potted up some orange chrysanthemum pots as Scott put the Pretoria Canna Lillies in the pots half deep. As Scott did that, Lexi was making up tags for each of the pots.

 As soon as they were done, Lexi put all the information on the sheets of papers on the seed fridge. We took a walk to the library with the watering jug, there are three plants in the back that were dry. We finished the day off by filling out our paperwork, starting with the IPM sheet and the PRIVA sheets.

            When we opened up on Sunday, we started by walking the crop again to check for dry spots and remove any debris. When we were done with that, Lexi started to clean the potting room and Scott worked in the greenhouse and cleaned the outside storage space. Before Lexi started cleaning the potting room, she pinched the Tradescantia in the four-inch pots. We spent most of the morning cleaning. Scott squeegeed the floors in the greenhouse after he watered some of the plants. He squeegeed the floors into the floor drains, after he completely wiped down the floors, swept and made sure all the hoses were rolled up properly and to make sure it looked organized. As Scott was doing that, Lexi was cleaning the potting room, she was cleaning every crack and crevice. She organized everything so well; it looked like a completely new room. 

After we had lunch, we took the water tank and two ladders and we started dusting the leaves on the three ficus trees in front of the bookstore. Lexi was wiping them down with a soap and water mix and Scott was using a leaf shine liquid. We spent our time doing them, we made sure that the leaves that were showing were really clean but we tried to get the really tall ones and the ones deep in the trees. We didn’t want to spend a ton of time each of the trees but we did spend a couple hours doing all of them.

At the end of the day, we spent the rest of the day finishing the PRIVA sheets, IPM sheets and uploading the pictures onto the computer.

        

        By the end of our weekend duty, we learned a couple things about the humidity levels in the greenhouse. We learned that whenever we have a question no matter how small or big but we have to be willing to ask the question. There were a couple points of the weekend that we had to call our supervisors for the answers, which is what they are there for. It is very risky putting students in charge of a whole greenhouse for a couple days, but it is a very good learning experience for us all to do a weekend now and then. 

Greenhouse Blog – Weekend Duty Feb 10 – 12                                            

Sean Fitzpatrick and Caitlin McPhee

Friday Feb 10 2017, Sean and I arrived to the Fanshawe greenhouse ready for action. Even though it was a bit gloomy and not very warm out our motivation was high. We began our day with a debriefing for the weekend by the resident greenhouse technician Jeff Rowley. While walking the crop we checked for unhappy plants and broken windows. We also made sure the germination chamber was filled with water to ensure the humidity in each chamber was acceptable. While walking the crop Sean and I placed sticky cards to measure pest levels in greenhouse, placing three yellow and one blue stick card. We opened the POS system for sales of cacti and succulents. Throughout the day we had many happy customers in the greenhouse. After cutting back the Colocasia, with the help of Jeff we applied aluminum sulphate to blue hydrangeas. Lunch time quickly came and as we re energized ourselves and I wrote down the rest of the duties for weekend. Lucas our Cuddy Farms Horticulture Technician dropped by with some odd jobs for us to do. He asked us to stain the trellis being used in the spring and allowed them to dry in our tractor bay. An hour after we watered the hydrangeas Sean and I took EC and pH readings which we found the pH was low on the blue hydrangeas while EC levels were acceptable. While working in the greenhouse we noticed some of our stock basket plants were missing labels, so we identified the missing plant names, took pictures, recorded them, and placed them in their rightful benches. That afternoon the clouds never seemed like they would go away but for a brief moment the sunlight in greenhouse beaming down on all the plants it was as if the plants were smiling back at us! Later that afternoon after re-walking the crop Sean and I noticed aphids on the base of the Colocasia, and we were able to stream a video of aphids moving on some foliage. We then cut the dead foliage off, cleaned and treated the plants with insecticidal soap. Sean later quarantined the plants in the tractor bay. Near the end of the day we shut down the sales, cleaned up and sterilized all the tools that were used including the benches in the potting room. 5:00 o’clock came and Sean and I signed out, dropped off the keys and left with a hard works day behind us. 

  

Saturday February 11^th 201

Sean and I arrived bright and early to the greenhouse on a very cloudy and windy morning with lots of jobs to do for the day. First we checked that all the lights were working; pipes were admitting heat, the heat mats and checked temperatures for the Priva system. The system showed us the temperatures climbs and dips over 24 hours. We walked the crop making sure we didn’t leave any unhappy plants unnoticed. After all the morning opening duties were complete we began by cleaning out the seed fridge. We pulled out all the drawers and containers wiped down and sterilized the fridge and attempted to put it all back together, which apparently was easier said than done, we quickly moved on to cleaning out the propagation by chamber removing all the cuttings out and placing them on tables in the potting room. After the chamber was clean, sterilized and as much of the algae taken off possible we placed the cuttings back into their cozy little environment. Sean and I then grabbed some stock baskets for Cuddy farms and took some cuttings for plants to be used in summer. We began by cutting the plants, dipping them in rooting hormones and placed them in cutting mix soil (2/3 mix HP and 1/3 perlite), watered the cuttings, labelled them, updated the stock inventory, and placed them in the germination chamber to start growing roots. Even though it seemed gloomy and cloudy all day we watered the succulents and Cannas as they needed little watering. After a hardy pizza lunch we took the Aquamate to the library and book store and watered the Ficus and under-story plants. We also treated them for mealy bug and cleaned all the dust off the leaves allowing them to take in more sunlight energy. Near the end of the day we had a visit from a fellow horticulture classmate to boost our energy and began our cleanup for the day.

   

Sunday February 13^th 2017

Today Sean and I arrived to the greenhouse ready to work. The weather was crummy with its freezing rain and snow mix .We certainly didn’t think mother nature was too happy today - maybe the thoughts of the upcoming Valentine’s Day was getting to her. We began with opening the greenhouse and completing all out our tasks without any problems. We finished staining the trellises needed for Cuddy farms in the spring and started right away with cleaning and organizing all the pots and trays in our tractor bay. After what seemed to have been millions of pots and trays we had finally placed each item on its proper shelf and labelled them. Lunch time today was a little later than usual but that didn’t seem to bother the two us and began our final hours of weekend duty. While filling the wash sinks we noticed we had no hot water! And quickly checked the greenhouse pipes to make sure they were still supplying heat for the crop. We informed Jeff of the incident and went on with our duties. At the end of the day it was time to get any other jobs completed. We wrote the IPM report for the weekend, this blog entry and finished cleaning out the catch basins. The floor drains in the greenhouse were pretty dirty so we decided to wash them out including the drain in the potting room. In our final hour of greenhouse weekend duty we had uploaded pictures to the stock basket inventory and re labelled pictures on the USB drives.

WEEKEND BLOG – February 3-5, 2017

By: Alison & Justin

Our weekend duty has been a lot of organizing and taking inventory within the Fanshawe greenhouse. On Friday morning we got started with our greenhouse check list. Watering, checking the temperatures, the humidity and opening the cash for Friday sales were some of the items on the list. Our program coordinator Michael Pascoe came into the greenhouse and asked us to make up succulent pots for the Plant Symposium coming up on Feb 17^th. For those of you that don’t know what that is, it is a horticulture event where people talk about flowers and plants. Justin and I had to make up 25 pots with around 4 succulents in them, with a decorative white stone on top. This task took most of Friday keeping the tags in line with the correct pot, and potting up certain succulents with others. These pots will enhance Fanshawe’s reputation - showing off all we have learned.

 After the succulent pots were complete we had 2 massive Aloe plants to re pot for the same horticulture show. We placed them into two decorative pots with the white decorative stone on top.

To end Friday off, we began to organize the 2 benches in the greenhouse for our sales shelf. Organizing included moving the 4 inch annual pots and keeping the same annuals together and then we had to keep the small succulents together. We decided to keep the variegated lavender scallops on the top shelf as they can be viewed from standing.

Saturday morning started out with the biggest job on our weekend duty. We had to go through all the stock baskets and organize them by their watering requirements. Each plant was tagged as green, yellow or red. Green means it likes water and needs a lot, yellow means it can be left a few days and still survive if it doesn’t get water for a day or so. Yellow also means it doesn’t like too much water or to be over watered. We have a very few plants categorized as red which means that they don’t like to be over watered and need to dried out in between watering. After researching each plant and typing out a label for it, we had organized them in the greenhouse on 3 benches by watering requirements. If there was more then one of the same plant, we had to make sure they were grouped together. The next step was to take pictures of each individual stock basket and upload them to a USB. Now for future reference we have information on all the plants we have in stock! Around lunch time, we went into the school to water the 3 tree Ficus in front of the book store and take off a few of the yellowing leaves. 

Next stop were the Spider plants in the hallway of M building to water.

 As yesterday was very sunny for a change, we walked the crop (Hydrangeas) around 3 and noticed the hydrangeas were very dry, even though they were watered in the morning so we decided to water them. Then to end Saturday night off we did a bit of cleaning in the greenhouse and potting room.

Sunday morning started off very cold and snowy which is a big change from Saturday. As we did our morning check list and walked the crop, we noticed the hydrangeas were still very moist from our late watering Saturday evening, so we chose not to water the crop this morning except for then the seed flats, poinsettias, and annuals that needed it. After walking the crop and watering, our next task on the list was to pot up 50 geranium cuttings. The perennial geraniums were dug out of the ground from the campus beds in the summer. We were to cut them off and get a good root systems and put 2-3 in a pot. We propagate these because instead of spending money on new ones, why wouldn’t you use the ones you already have. It’s the smart way to garden!! After the geraniums were done, we transplanted 4 pack annuals into 4” pots, and put these out into greenhouse. We did our second crop walk around 1 o’clock and made the decision to water the hydrangeas. In our greenhouse class on Wednesday morning we were instructed to do an aluminium sulfate drench to the Blue hydrangeas. The drench will change the pH in the plant which will help make the flower to come out as a purer blue. However, the scale we used to measure the correct amount of aluminum sulfate was out of whack and it was too far gone before we could change anything. Our duty over the weekend was to monitor the Blue hydrangeas’ pH and E.C. readings. We also decided to water the Blue hydrangeas with the watering can since it will flush the plant out better rather than the emitters. All in all, good weekend in the Fanshawe greenhouse!

January 27 - 29, 2017 Weekend Duty Blog

Jihyun and Brett

Jan 27^th

On Friday January 27^th, we started our weekend duty by starting our morning check list which included taking greenhouse temperatures and walking the crop, and checking PRIVA for temperature settings. After our check list was completed we began to transplant Pennisetum grasses into 1 liter pots. We had to check all the grasses for dead reeds and grass blades and clean them out. If the grass had too much dead material, we had to compost them. In the end, we had a total of 219 grasses.

After the grasses were done we had to make new fertilizer for the blue hydrangeas. We haven’t made it before so Jeff came and showed us how. With this fertilizer, we needed 1666 grams to put into our 10 liters of water. Since we had all of the fertilizer mixing tools out we also needed to make new stock basket fertilizer which was a 20 – 20 – 20 fertilizer, to make this we needed 500 grams for 10 liters of water.

Jan 28^th

Our second day started the same as before by checking off our morning check list. After our check list was done we finished taking spider plant off shoots and placed them in the green house with a plastic covering. After that was all done we had to change some emitters on bench 11. The emitters were not emitting water as they should have so we took them off completely and placed the old ones in a hot water bleach solution to soak. We then put the new ones on and placed them in the hydrangeas.

After lunch, we went to F hall and to the library to water and cut any dead wood away for the tropical plants. They were pretty dry but there was hardly anything to clean out of them. When we got back to the greenhouse  we made some cuttings out of the German ivy in the green house and put them in a flat covered in a clear plastic cover to keep the moisture in.

Jan 29^th

We started our day by doing our morning check list and walking the crop. In our walk, we decided that the crop needed to be watered. So, we started with the blue hydrangeas and set up the dosatron to use the blue fertilizer. After the blue hydrangeas had enough water we switched to the other hydrangeas and switched to the appropriate fertilizer. We then spot watered any plants that were dry in the green house with a watering can. After lunch, we decided to clean the entire greenhouse, we washed all the floors with the hose and squeegee. We also cleaned the tables off with a rag soaked in water and a bit of bleach.

After the floors were done we had gathered a lot of compost from the weekend so we took the RTV out with the compost and dumped it into the compound. Then to finish the weekend we did our closing checklist and locked up.