Weekend Duty Blog for September 22-24^th 2017

By: Nicolai J. and Jennifer H.

                This was the weekend that Airshow London occurred, and so throughout our duties here, we got to hear, and sometimes see the overflights of the various aircraft that were performing at the event. In a way, we got our own free show from right inside the greenhouse. Friday morning we got off to a quick start with Jeff giving us a breakdown of our duties for the weekend. He showed us the ins and outs of our jobs, and helped switch out the labels in the label machine twice for us. Essentially for our duties, we had to dig up, cut back, divide, and pot up the red fountain grass found in front of the greenhouse (figure 1), we had to take cuttings and cut back the stock baskets (figure 2) that hadn’t already been done by the weekly greenhouse classes, and we had to install additional drip lines on the benches (figure 3). On top of those special assignments, we had to perform the weekly and daily activities like watering the interior plants by the bookstore and library, checking the crops, watering, performing plant sales on Friday, and cleaning. Once we had checked the crops for any problems, we got to work on the stock basket cuttings, we quickly discovered one basket absolutely infested with mealy bug, we kept it quarantined by the POS terminal for Jeff and Sue to pass judgement over it. Near the end of the day we closed the shade curtains, but the automatic overhead curtains did not close, so we had to call security to get them to open the priva box so that we could manually close them.

                On the next day Jennifer retrieved the key in the morning and opened the greenhouse, but since security hadn’t turned off the alarm yet, we got quite a loud wake up call. While it was still somewhat cool, Nicolai took the opportunity to do an inventory of all the miscellaneous items that reside above the washrooms. Before lunch we attempted to do the interiorscape, only to have to turn back halfway through, as the library didn’t open until 1 in the afternoon. Soon after we tried to install the new drip lines, after much difficulty and trial and error we got them installed .

For the remainder of the day, we took more cuttings from the stock baskets, and lo and behold, discovered another begonia covered in mealy bug, it joined its friend in our makeshift quarantine zone.

                On our final day we got to work on the grasses, throughout the entire morning we processed a row of the pennisetum. Throughout our three days in the greenhouse, we had to manually close the blackout fabric at the end of each day, and switch it back to automatic the next morning. Only later on Sunday did we discover that it was an error in the programming that was causing the fabric to close closer to 7pm, rather than the 5pm when it is supposed to close.  The reason we use the blackout fabric is so that we can encourage the poinsettias to colour up in time for Christmas. In their native habitat in Mexico, which is near the equator, poinsettias get close to 12 hours of darkness this time of the year, so the plant has adapted to use this photoperiod as a time telling device, so that they know when to flower. Here in southwestern Ontario, those 12 hours of darkness is harder to come by, and sitting right beside the main college buildings, nigh impossible. So, to produce this darkness, the greenhouse is covered in curtains and ceiling cloth made from blackout fabric. In the evening, these are drawn shut so to give our poinsettias their desired night’s sleep. After several months of this kind of treatment, the distinctive colouration that poinsettias are known for starts to appear, just in time for Christmas sales!