Weekend duty blog - March 24-26, 2017

This Saturday was Fanshawe’s Open House. This is an exciting event for Fanshawe to show off programs to prospective students. Because of this event there was quite a few extra tasks that needed to be accomplished this weekend.

Friday

Friday was a big day for Julian and I. We started our day with the opening checklist and walking the crop. We needed to water all Hydrangeas, hanging stock baskets, perennial Geraniums, and seedlings. We also potted up and cut back annual Geraniums. The Technology department at Fanshawe contracted us to pot up Sansevieria plants in planters they had build for an experiment they are conducting. They are trying to see if adding plants to a room will improve the air quality. These planters were made of wood with medal liners. They were very heavy and quite difficult to wheel through the school on large racks. Both of us were sweating profusely by the time we made it to the opposite side of the school.  In the last hour we tried to clean up for open house. This consisted of reorganizing the Hydrangeas, washing the floors and making sure the benches looked clean. There was so much to do we didn’t get to the massive pile of 4’’ pots that had been left by the sink from the classes that week. We did however put them in the sink to soak overnight so they could be cleaned first thing in the morning. It was overall a good day and we got a lot done.

 Saturday

Saturday began by getting everything ready for open house. We needed to ensure the greenhouse looked clean and orderly. Julian washed all the pots left from the week, while I cleaned to potting room floors and organized under the table. Some first year students volunteered to help with open house and they arrived around 9:30 am. I got them helping with making petunia hanging baskets. They were quite efficient and with that many people helping it made it go by very fast. While that was going on Julian was seeding Salvia. At 10:40 am I had to leave the greenhouse to do a radio interview to promote our program. Julian also had to do an interview but later on in the day. We sold the last of the Hydrangeas just an hour or so before the open house ended. I was nice to see the last of the Hydrangeas get sold. People seemed to love them this year. Once open house was over we still had 3 hours left in the day. We used this time to put a new heat mat in the propagation chamber, make tip cuttings, add Begonias to inventory list, and fix the sign outside to read  “Hydrangeas Sold Out”. In the last hour of the day we also ensured the interior Ficus’s were watered. It was a hectic day with people coming in and out of the greenhouse constantly, but we made the best of it and got a lot of work done.

Sunday

Sunday was our last day in the greenhouse. We started our day by doing the opening check list and opening the cash. After that Julian washed the remainder of the pots, while I walked the crop and watered any plants that were dry. A big task we had to get done was hanging up some of the stock baskets to make some room for seedlings on a bench. Once all the baskets were hung, we laid out two heat mats on bench 3 and put the seedlings on them.  Once that was all done we met up with the maintenance crew for lunch. After lunch I washed the floors of the greenhouse while Julian seeded 7 tray of Dusty Miller. Mike Pascoe also asked us to seed some Snow Gum for him so we did one tray. While talking to Mike Pascoe the day before, he told us that the seeds were from Australia and he got them as a gift. We were running low on potting soil so after all our tasks were done we mixed up some soil for the week ahead.                         

Overall it was a great weekend. Julian and I worked great together. We got all jobs done that were assigned to us and also met a lot of nice people at open house. We worked hard all weekend and it paid off.