Weekend Maintenance Blog

September 27-29, 2019

William, Hayden and Robert

Day 1:

An important part of college is the hands on aspect, especially when it comes to greenhouse and landscape work. Luckily for us, we have an amazing program that gives us the first hand experience of work, while also learning new skills on our beautiful college campus.

The start of the work weekend starts off with a small refresher on how to work the radios and how to properly sign in and out of work duties. Afterwards the jobs began; William on the tractor, Robert on the RTV and I on plant duty. Since Fanshawe College is a registered botanical garden, I was to write information on the plants before we planted them as to keep proper records. Once the proper plants had been found, we got to work.

 We dug up and transplanted Irises in the proper garden. Once done, we transplanted hydrangeas into the proper garden bed. Then we moved outside of K building and began planting some more. Robert was able to prune the Norway maple shading the area we wished to plant. Another garden done leads to another in desperate need of weeding and new plants.

  We began planting different trees like the Eastern Redbud, Cedar and Spruce. Then near the end of the day we helped Matt unload some school uniforms into the main classroom in H1033. It was not a part of the weekend duty, but it was still a nice thing to do. Especially for our program coordinator! From there, we ended our first day of weekend duty and cleaned up.

Day 2:

This day we were more prepared as we used the knowledge we learned the previous day and got straight to work: circle checks on equipment and vehicles, plant checks, and off to the gardens. It was a relatively nice morning, despite the spitting rain. Even if the plants were not completely watered the day before, they were on Saturday as it continued to rain throughout the day.

   We did some work in the front of the school planting  and staking three Catalpa trees. With the skills we learned from Arboriculture and from the assistance of google we put our skills to the test. There was plenty of sun and space for the Catalpa to grow, and I have high hopes for them in the future.

With that out of the way, we got started on the garden beds in the front of the school. Here we planted some Berberis and some Echinacea. The soil was incredibly compacted as it was mostly made from clay, and was used as a walkway for quite some time. We hope the garden beds will stay nice out in front with all the smokers, but we have our doubts. We are not entirely sure that the plants will be okay with growing in such harsh soil conditions, but the Berberis will sure keep students from stepping on the garden with its incredible pointed spines on each branch.

 We got them planted and ventured across the road to the other garden. It was mostly finished, and only  needed help with mulching. We headed over to the other side to help the school employees finishing raking the mulch. Unfortunately we weren't able to finish the other side.

Day 3:

          On the third day we started it off as the previous two days but without the assistance of Jeff. We started the day by doing the circle checks to the machines we were going to use through the day. It was a cold morning, but it helped us get moving. We started finishing the mulching that we didn't get to finish the day before. After we finished the mulching for the garden, we put mulch mountain in the back if the trailer. The day before, we asked Jeff why he had so much of it and he replied with “because it was free”. The mulch was especially heavy from the rain the day before. Eventually after a few minutes of using the forks to start lifting the mulch into the back of the trailer Robert came up with the great idea to take the trailer off the tractor and use the tractor to lift the mulch into the trailer which saved us a lot of time. After successfully filling the trailer to the top with mulch we took our lunch. Right when we got done our lunch, we started the plantings of the Russian peonies around some ornamental grass in front of F building. While we were planting the peonies, Robert went around cleaning up the extra mulch and soil left with a backpack blower. Making sure nothing is a mess while also putting away tools and staying organized are essential parts of landscaping. Robert came back 20 minutes later with the Dublin peonies. Hayden and I started planting the newly dropped of peonies as Robert headed over to R2 building to weed eastern garden bed. Before we knew it, the day was over and we started to get everything p

cleaned up and all the equipment checked back in. We actually stayed a little extra time to make sure everything was in its proper place before we left.