Greenhouse Weekend Duty Blog October 19-21, 2018

Aaron B. and Alex S.

Christmas cactus:

            Our plant of choice for this week's blog is the Christmas cactus (Schlumbergera × buckleyi). We chose this plant because it’s an interesting topic for our class seeing as we were the ones to propagate them last year and now we get to see it full circle as they go on sale for this winter season. Christmas cactus are very easy to care for and take little watering seeing as its essential to allow soil to dry out in between watering so that you don’t end up with root rot or a fungal disease. Christmas cactus got their name for the fact that they normally flower around this time of year due to the light cycle present outside, much like their close relative the Thanksgiving cactus (you can just guess when they flower, provided you live in the United States).

Flowering Requirements:

            Preparing to get your Christmas cactus to flower should start 6-8 weeks prior to flowering season. They’re on a low light cycle, which simply means less day and more night. They need this in order to flower. Any outside or ambient lights will cause your plant to lose sync in its cycle and not be able to flower much like the poinsettia crop we work with already. Other methods I (Aaron) read on called for them to be put in a blacked out or minimal lighting room for up to three weeks prior to flowering to allow for proper new growth to form. Once flowered you must not let the soil dry out seeing as in this stage the plants require much more water due to the hydrogen being taken up through the flowers. Flowering season typically runs for 4-6 weeks and each flower tends to bloom for 6-9 days.

Off Season:

            During the off season of the plant it’s smart to store it outside in a shady area to allow for new growth and to make sure you won’t be dealing with the soil drying rapidly in the pots. Also when it comes to pruning or taking cuttings the best time is around June to encourage new growth to form. When it comes to propagating Christmas cactus it’s really easy. You just need 2-3 stem segments as on will be fully submerged in order to form new root system, and this usually takes around 4-6 weeks to allow for a healthy root system to form.

Christmas Cactus: available now for $4.99 at your local Fanshawe Greenhouse!

Major Weekend Duty Projects:

            One of the major projects we had was to go about cutting back the Canna ‘Red Futurity’ on the east side of the greenhouse and storing their root balls away in the bulb crates for next year’s grow season. We have to do this because they are only an annual plant and with our harsh winter months their root system would just not survive and so the plant would just die. To ensure this doesn’t happen we collect samples each year to preserve the plant. We do this by simply putting newspapers down to hold all the soil in place, and then will add the root balls with a light application of soil to ensure the roots don’t fry out to heavily and every so often give them a light watering to keep the roots alive but not so much that you would encourage new growth. So really in essence you just water them enough to keep them dormant during our winter months.

            Another cool one Mike had us save were the Alocasia odara, Upright Elephant Ear. They were cool seeing as he was telling me (Aaron) they are a distinct cultivar out of Florida and so that’s why he wanted to preserve them. But what I found really cool about them was the fact that he had me leave the foliage on the plants to allow for it to naturally die back. This was to allow for the plant to take back in all its nutrients from the leaves and store it into its root ball for the following year’s growth. I just find this neat because say if in nature this plant went through some environmental stress and had to die back, it would still have the chance to bounce back the following year or when the environment was suited again for growth. Now I call that the ultimate hibernation.

            On top of the winterization of the root balls mentioned above, we also winterized 11 other plants. Unlike the root balls, we brought in sections of the plants which will continue to grow throughout the winter. We placed them in hanging baskets, packed them in with Pro-Mix as needed, pruned them back (some quite heavily), and then placed them in the greenhouse where they will be hanging from the rafters until they are ready to plant outside again next year.

            As well as our main crop of Poinsettias, the second year Horticulture students from the past couple of years have been growing Poinsettia standards. These are Poinsettias that, instead of being sold at Christmas, have been grown on towards their tree form. The current crop are about 2-2 1/2 feet tall from the soil, and are being trained to grow their leaves and flowers in a ball on top of their main stem. I (Alex) attempted to prune some of the extra growth to clean up the ball form of the foliage and was somewhat successful, however there is one standard that will need an extra year (at least) of growth before sale as I accidentally removed half of the foliage in a wrong snip of my secateurs.

            When we arrived on Friday morning, we were shown a number of containers in the greenhouse that contained wildflower seeds that had been drying. They were bagged up and labelled, to be put into storage for future planting and/or study.