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.