Weekend Blog Entry

Will and Justin

March 16-18, 2018

Its spring time in the greenhouse, lots going on this weekend. Firstly we sold a ton of hydrangeas on Friday and Saturday a lot of customers are commenting about the face book post that caught their attention and made them want to come buy plants here at the college. During our weekend me and Justin updated the big outdoor sign, hopefully it brings more customers our way! The most popular hydrangea is definitely the early blue although it is not looking very blue at the moment. A lot of the hydrangeas are yet to bloom but customers are still buying them in advance of their bloom. The vanilla sky is the least popular. By the time the weekend was over a lot of the hydrangeas had bloomed that weren’t bloomed at the beginning.

This weekend was also the beginning of the herb and vegetable growing season. There are a ton of small vegetable and herb plants in the early stage of their life. The herbs that are now growing are: common oregano (Origanum vulgare), Italian parsley (Petroselinum crispum), sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum), Cilantro (coriandrum sativum), German winter thyme (Thymus vulgaris), and Bouquet dill (Anethum graveolens). The vegetables that are currently growing in the greenhouse are: Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris), spaghetti winter squash, small sugar pumpkin, Burgess buttercup winter squash, Autumn delight winter squash, Butterscotch hybrid winter squash, and nicotiana perfume mix.

So as you can tell there is a lot going on. Also we are growing baskets for Cuddys and the western fair. These baskets needed to be checked , fertilized and water but the drip lines helped with that. There is a lot of baskets and they seem to be doing well, surely hoping for a juicy return on those baskets. We also had the task of applying slow release fertilizer to the Alocasias and petunias which was much more of a pain than I thought it would be. We attempted to transplant some of the plants from the propagation chamber but none of them had enough roots to withstand the stress of transplanting. We also went through every stock basket and made an underside label for each basket. These labels now help with taking inventory and knowing whats what in the greenhouse. This task was tedious and time consuming but its done now and it will be a great help for anyone who is working in the greenhouse.

A lot of people came in during the weekend to film for their greenhouse project which caused some confusion but the weekend was really calm for the most part. The priva system wasn’t working on Friday but a couple people from the i.t compartment came and fixed it so we could get back to routine. We were selling a lot of plants on Friday and Saturday and found that the slowdown is the wrapping stage, it would be nice to have a stand like for the poinsettias but for hydrangeas instead to support us in the wrapping process.

We transplanted a three stemmed yucca into a larger pot with an existing yucca for the interiorscape. As well we monitored the plants outside the bookstore and In the library, all are well. We also organized the outdoor storage area and cleared out some snow so that it is back to being fully usable. We also did a big clean in the greenhouse, we swept all over the floor and washed it down after plus squeegeed it. It looks great although some chips in the floor really impair its ability to look good and stay dry. The drains were really full of plant material, dirt, etc when we emptied them.

Chris and Rob Weekend Duty

Open House

                We came in Friday knowing roughly what our weekend was going to be like - prepare for the open house! Make this place look great for prospective students and for the public eye! With this in mind we decided to get the majority of the hard and dirty work done on Friday so that we could spend the rest of our day getting cleaned up and ready for Saturday! Between the two of us we managed to water the entire crop specific to their nutritional needs and we fixed the slow release fertilizer on the Alocasia crop – too much had been put on the week before. The way we corrected this mistake was pretty simple, we scraped all of the excessive fertilizer off and put the correct amount of 1 tsp on rather than 1 tbsp. There was an aphid problem in the greenhouse mostly attacking the Tradescanthia - Rob dealt with this problem by removing the Tradescanthia from the hanging baskets. Rob also helped Jeff with the hook up of the trailer wiring on the tractor. We worked until around 1 and then we decided to take lunch, to the Outback Shack! After enjoying our lunch, we headed back to the greenhouse to work the rest of the afternoon. Our Friday afternoon consisted of seeding coleus and portulaca, this took us quite some time because there were roughly 1000 seeds per bottle! We made three trays of 288’s of each plant and put them in the germination chamber. It took us some time because the seeds where so small and hard to work with, we managed though! Throughout the day there were many plant sales, roughly $190 worth of sales! It was nice having customers because it adds another perspective of the business, it’s not only just working in the greenhouse, you get to see the front end as well. We spent the last 2 hours of our day cleaning the greenhouse in preparation for Saturday!

Saturday:

        We arrived on a beautiful morning in anticipation of the Fanshawe College Open House, which showcases our program for perspective students. We started our day by checking the crops ensuring that they all looked happy and full of life. After completing the morning checklist we went into the school and dropped off some hydrangeas by the bookstore corridor to showcase what we have done this year. It got busy quickly with a constant flow of people coming into the greenhouse to talk about the Horticulture Techician program. During the day we had some extra help from the first year students, and with their help we potted some of the Gold Spot Plectranthus and made some new cuttings for the propagation chamber. Over the weekend we had a quota to get 300  pots of the Gold Spot Plectranthus, we managed to get 330 pots and we made an additional 48 cuttings that we put in the propagation chamber. The first year students also helped us clean the algae off of the propagation chamber. The majority of our day though was helping prospective students and selling plants. We had a lot of potential students that came by today interested in the program which took up a lot of our time on Saturday. After the conclusion of the Fanshawe Open House we watered the entire greenhouse as it could have made a hazard having a wet floor during the hours of the open house. After watering the crop we did a quick cleaning before we went home for the evening.

Sunday:

                We arrived ready for our last day of weekend duty; we started by walking the crop and ensuring germination and propagation chambers were all in working order.  We then went into the school before we had to open our cash till for potential customers to check on our plants in the interior of the building.  When we got back to the greenhouse we started by taking cuttings of more Gold Spot Plectranthus as well as transplanting a few that we were unable to pot yesterday. This took us to our first break, after which we potted some Millet seeds and washed some used pots and trays that we put back into storage. Lunch came before we knew it - yay the final greenhouse weekend duty is almost done and to this point the weekend has been a success.  After lunch we completed our E.C and pH testing, which determined that the E.C test was low most likely because of the lack of fertilizer since we are trying to harden the plants off for customers. Also, the pH was low as well but not far off the goal of 1.5. We then started our blog and paperwork that is due at the end of weekend duty. After completing those tasks we cleaned and ensured the crop was watered and healthy.

Overall the weekend was a success; the open house went well with many prospective students attending. We sold many hydrangeas and people were very happy with the selection of succulents and cacti and especially the hydrangea color selection.  As you can see we have a lot of space that has opened up on our benches. But it won’t be long till we have another crop on the go. Thanks for reading, 'till next time…….

Chris and Rob

Greenhouse Duty Blog March 9 to 11, 2018

Tawny, Rebecca S.

Friday

                Supplying landscaping companies with plants is an important role served by the Fanshawe greenhouse. This provides a source of revenue for the program as well as a way for students to get hands on experience planning, planting and growing a crop with a set market date. With this in mind, we chose to make the focus of our weekend duty to make part of this process easier and more efficient for students. A key part of producing plants in the greenhouse is maintaining stock baskets which are plants that are used to propagate new plants which are sold to landscapers. We are frequently tasked during greenhouse class with updating the stock basket list and checking on the plants. Often this job is done quickly or overlooked because it is sometimes difficult and overwhelming. The stock plants are hard to reach, often hard to find, and the list of what we have is not always accurate. On Friday we dedicated ourselves to organizing the stock baskets, updating the list, and making new baskets to ensure there was at least two of each variety.

                On Friday we began organizing the plants alphabetically and labelling these sections so they are clear and easy to find. While we do not expect other students to keep the plants in this exact order, grouping them by the first letter of the genus name and keeping multiple like plants together (ex. Three metallic leaf begonias side by side) makes the plants much easier to find and going through each plant alphabetically made it clearer for us to see which plants we had and how many in order to update the list. While doing this we also updated the plant labels and ensured they were for the correct plant.

Saturday

                We made new stock baskets from rooted cuttings in four inch pots if they were available, and took cuttings of plants that needed to be propagated. There were several varieties that we did not know how to propagate and since the plants were still so small we did not want to risk taking cuttings that would not be viable. There was only one trailing violet plant in the greenhouse but it seemed very hardy and had lots of healthy growth. We did not know what type of cuttings to take from this type of plant and searching online did not provide any helpful information. We took a chance with this plant and cut off what looked like off-shoots and potted them. We are very interested to see if these will grow as it seems to be a very easy way to produce a new plant for sale if it is successful. We also took postage stamp cuttings from several begonia cultivars. When they are successful it is a simple way to grow several new plants from just one leaf.

                Not all plants that are sold in the greenhouse are grown from cuttings. While this is an easy way to grow a more mature plant quickly, some plants are very easy to grow from seed. We planted hundreds of marigold seeds on Saturday. This was done quite quickly by setting up a production line to fill trays, make holes in the soil and drop in the seeds. It is exciting to see the seeds planted in earlier classes sprouting already. We have to take special care however not to leave sprouts in the germination chamber too long as they will become long and leggy, and to frequently check that sprouted seeds in the greenhouse do not dry out as this can happen very quickly and kill the plants.

Sunday

                Daylights savings time began today so it was much darker when we arrived at the greenhouse and the curtains automatically opened later in the morning because of the time change. The priva system was not functioning properly on the computer but everything seemed to be functioning in the greenhouse including heat, fans, and curtains.

                We finished with the stock baskets on Friday so today’s focus was cleaning up and organizing the rest of greenhouse. We organized the chemical storage room to ensure everything was easy to find. We went through the tractor bay and made sure all the pots were in the correct spots and labeled. We washed and dried pots that we had used over the weekend. We also took EC and PH readings on the four different varieties of hydrangeas to ensure they are within the normal limits.

                We worked very hard to clean and organize the hanging stock plants and four inch stock plants over the weekend. We hope that by doing this it will make it easier for students and staff to locate them and know what plants we have on hand so that they can be propagated and we can continue to supply landscapers with summer annuals.

Weekend Duty Sutherland & Nicolai

February 23-25, 2018

Friday we began by getting a brief chat from Jeff outlining the duties assigned for the weekend, performed a quick yet thorough circle check of the greenhouse and crop, followed by a bit of spot watering and the planting of the purple fountain grasses.

We harvested cuttings from succulents and placed them in a container on the heating mats. 

A small number of petunias had not yet been transferred into hanging baskets so we placed them in baskets and placed them on the greenhouse bench for petunias.

We seeded Dusty Miller seeds and placed them in the germination chamber (making sure the water was full and at the proper temperature). After a lunch break the hydrangeas were in need of water and fertilization so we changed the dosatron pump to get the correct fertilizer for each type of hydrangea. Perhaps the longest and most tedious job of the entire weekend; alphabetizing the stock baskets, 

a simple job nonetheless but a constant up and down on a ladder and back and forth looking for the proper plant for the proper place (nice begonias by the way). A circle check of the 2- seater RTV was completed as well as a compost run.  A delivery of cannas had arrived at 12:50 and had to be transplanted into 5.5 inch square green pots until the end of the day.

Saturday we carefully went through the entire crop and checked for pests, and treated what we did find, which was minimal. After going through the crop we spot watered the plants that were dry, and then continued on the alphabetizing of the stock baskets, and the propagation of the cannas.

Earlier this week we got our first shipments of petunias in, quite a few varieties for us to grow. Most of them will be grown and sent out to clients like Clintar and the Western Fair Grounds in the springtime. However, we do have 20 hanging baskets for our own use that we will sell in the greenhouse once they are properly established. Aside from those, we have quite a few in 4” pots that we will use around the campus in the planters there. Petunias originally came from South America, where the Incas believed they helped chase away evil spirits. They are very heat tolerant but require a decent amount of water in hotter conditions. Petunias are insect pollinated, and use intense bright colours to attract them, which happens to attract the avid gardener and botanist to propagate this beautiful plant!