Weekend Duty Blog

By Easton Klaudi and Dakota Stephens

Friday April 7^th 2017

On Friday our entire class was completing our practical CLT exams as part of the new and improved industry standards. We were busy that morning preparing the greenhouse work before the events of the day.  We filled 2000 4” pots with media in one hour and thirty minutes by hand. We have the brand new potting machine up and running but innate human spirit drives us to beat the machine. We now know the machine has to beat an hour and that we feel we can too! We also set three different sticky traps in attempt to monitor pest levels in the greenhouse. We then headed off to Cuddys in Strathroy for our final Certified Exams.  The CLT exams were a great experience for most of us; there had been snow in the morning but the day ended in pure sunshine. We filled our bellies and returned for one final hour of power in the greenhouse for the day. We filled more 4” pots with media and did some afternoon watering and maintenance. We closed the greenhouse for the night.

                                                                              

Saturday April 8^th 2017

On Saturday morning, we arrived at the greenhouse ready to work during a beautiful day. We began by opening up the greenhouse and going through the opening checklist. Temperatures were optimal and there were no signs of major problems. We then performed the required watering (Seedlings, Petunias, geraniums etc.) We fertilized all the annuals in the greenhouse. We then finished preparing the rest of the 4” pots for Wednesday’s class. Easton also pinched the chlorotic leaves of the Petunia baskets to improve the aesthetics and to obviously keep the foliage color as uniform as possible.  We then moved on to planting the vegetable seeds that Lucas brought in to sell at the Cuddy’s Open Garden in June.  We watered them and covered with plastic domes to help retain moisture during germination.  We decided to begin moving cuttings from the propagation chamber to 4” pots. Dakota began to do some cleaning around the Greenhouse to help decrease the possibility of pests and diseases as fungus gnats were found flying in the main instruction area. We then worked on some stock basket cuttings, moving them from trays to 4” pots. Some of them did not have enough root growth so they remained in the propagation chamber until they are ready. We also had to water the seedlings in the greenhouse again because it was so sunny out and they began to dry from the increased rate of transpiration.

Sunday April 9^th 2017

      Sunday morning saw us return for the third and final day of our greenhouse duty. We opened the doors and made our phone call to Jeff Rowley to let him know we were getting ready for action. Our red and white Petunias growing in baskets (to celebrate Canada’s 150^th anniversary) are preparing themselves vigorously to bloom for the historic celebrations. For 150 years we have developed and reshaped this nation. Canada has a rich history both in peace keeping globally as well as the trade of our natural resources and of course our world renowned maple syrup from Canadian Sugar Maple trees. When it comes to our waving flag and our blooming flowers we want the white and the red to glow in honor of our heritage. We used two types of fertilizer this weekend, 350ppm formula, for our petunias to grow, as well as 200ppm 20-20-20 stock basket solution for stock plants and the Alocasia plants. Quickly we went inside the school with our watering tanker to care for the plants in front of the book store and the library. We checked our propagation chamber to find a few of our specimens were well rooted and ready for a 4” pot. We mixed in our standard Pro mix HP mycorrhizae with just some good clean water and made sure to transfer the numbers in our records from the propagation chamber quantities to the 4” pot quantities. Plants can easily get lost, stolen or damaged so proper tracking keeps proper records and our program coordinators happy. We used our E.C. and pH reading technology (pH- 6.4, E.C= 2.1) to ensure the petunias were being cared for properly and we cleaned the leak out of the container it all came in… people need to be a little more careful when putting things away, but we all need to finish the work we find before stopping the day. We have to look after each other, care about each other and we have to bloom together.

 

The Horticultural Technician program was a great experience; people taught each other how to stand together and how to chase dreams. In my early twenties with a joyful tear in my eye we finished our final Fanshawe horticulture blog post and see the future in front of me. Thank you all.