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.