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.