Weekend Duty (Jan 12-Jan 14) Sara and Rebecca

FRIDAY, JANUARY 12

On Friday, we met with Jeff at 8, and began to do some post-congress clean up. Together, we unloaded the program trailer and organized all the tools and equipment we had brought with us to Toronto. We unloaded all the plant material in the greenhouse that we had taken with us. After everything was put back in its place and everything was back to normal, Becca and I met with Jeff and he informed us of all our tasks to do for the weekend.

We began our tasks with completing our opening checklist. Unfortunately, the PRIVA system on the computer was not working this weekend, so Jeff said we were exempt from completing this component of our duty. Instead, we began a large clean up in the greenhouse. We removed any leftover mulch in the stock basket pots, put hangers back onto the pots, and inserted drip lines. We also pruned the Pennisetum grasses, removing any dead foliage within the plants. After this, we did a compost run with the RTV in the snow and hail.

Our next big task was transplanting all the ‘Chique’ hydrangeas from their small green pots to the bigger black ones. These hydrangeas were becoming pot bound, so while transplanting, we tickled the root system to encourage new root growth in their new homes. We did not complete all of the transplanting on Friday, because we were running close to quitting time. We soaked the floor in the greenhouse and squeegeed all the excess water and called it a day.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 13

We arrived at the greenhouse at 7:50 and begin our day. We start by completing our morning checklist, and then finished up transplanting the ‘Chique’ hydrangeas. The plants in the greenhouse all looked a little thirsty, so we decided to begin watering and fertilizing. First, we fertilized the blue hydrangeas by turning all the valves that were not directed towards our target so that they didn’t get fed the wrong solution. Then, we switched the Dosatron’s supply of fertilizer to the mix specifically for the blue variety. Once these plants had been fed, we fertilized the pink/white hydrangeas with their specific mix, turning off the valves accordingly so that every plant received their proper nutrients. Finally, we hit all the perennials and the stock baskets with 20/20/20 fertilizer to put a pep in their step because they looked sad from congress.

Next, we were tasked to plant leftover tulips in the large planters inside the school, by the bookstore. There was lots of garbage in these planters, so we cleaned them up, pruned any dead out and planted the tulips in their pots into these planters.  We took the Aqua mate and fertilized/watered these planters afterwards along with the 3 planters that were in the library. The ramp was steeper than expected. Once finished this, we returned the Aqua mate back to its home in the tool room and headed back into the greenhouse.

We placed the sticky traps in the greenhouse. We left them on for 4 hours due to the hatching of the parasitic wasp. The traps caught 2 fungus gnats. There were lots of pots that needed to be washed and it was becoming overwhelming so we decided to tackle that next. I (Sara) washed the pots while Becca cleaned the floors because we had created a small mess.  Once we had a clean work area, we began to take cuttings for the order of the purple and variegated inch plants as well as the gold dipped coleus. Upon working on this, we swept, cleaned and locked up for the night.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 14

On Sunday morning we completed our checklist and got to work. We finished taking cuttings for the order, potted them up and moved on to the next task. We walked the crop, finished washing the pots, swept underneath all the benches in the greenhouse, spot watered anything that looked dry.  We flooded the floors and did a final cleanup of everything.  We completed the blog I am currently writing and did another compost run. I am about to work on our IPM discussion post. To finish, we transplanted the Electric Lemon Coleus and refilled the Pro-mix container.

Overall, I learned a lot from this weekend duty. Using the Dosatron was a new skill I learned as well as getting some more experience on the RTV. It was a very enjoyable weekend, we had lots of fun!

-Sara and Becca