Weekend Duty Greenhouse Blog November 1-3, 2019

Dylan K. , Hilary E. & Steven N.

Friday, November 1, 2019

We arrived to the greenhouse dark and with snow blasted Friday morning to receive a brief introduction from technician Jeff Rowley who was also able to answer any questions we may have had.  After completing our opening checklist, the three of us set out on our first task of repairing a few irrigation lines.  Some of the drip lines for the poinsettia crop had become squished under the bench. As a result, the plants effected showed signs of under watering.  In order to replace the damaged lines we had to carefully crawl underneath the benches, avoiding the heating pipes, and install the new lines.  Once we were finished, the stunted plants could be placed back on the benches with their drippers.

 Our next task was to mix some more stock solution to last us the weekend. Afterwards, we got to work on identifying a few trays of stock plants to be transferred into the greenhouse. We quickly identified one of them as Billie Jean Begonias.  Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful in identifying the second plant. 

Upon completing our afternoon crop walk, we decided to do some deflowering of the stock plants as well as remove any dead plants from the benches to clear up some space.  Afterwards, we spent the rest of the afternoon propagating some Billie Jean Begonia stems that had rooted inside of the propagation chamber.  They were placed inside alone without soil and had developed roots from each node, so we were able to place the cuttings inside the greenhouse right away.  Our final task of 

the day was to prepare and store some Cannas from Clintar to be planted in the springtime. 

After completing our closing checklist and closing the shade curtains, we called it a day at 5:00 and headed home for the night.

Saturday, November 2, 2019

We got to the school early to grab the keys from the security desk at 7:40 am, it was cold and dark. We got to the greenhouse shortly after and then went through the checklist. We also at that time opened up the greenhouse and took off the shade curtains. After we completed the mandatory checklist. We made cuttings of Calio Plant ‘Purple Knight’ and Cobaea Scandens.

We then went through all the cuttings and potted plants to see which plant needed to be propagated or transferred into pots if they have established a root system.

That took us the whole morning. After lunch we tidied up the area, then fertilized the poinsettias. This took two different fertilizers. One fertilizer was just for Golden GLO which is 20-20-20 @ 300 ppm which we had to turn off all the bench drippers then the one bench that had the Golden GLO off. Then we had to change over the fertilizer to 20-20-20 @ 250ppm for the rest of the poinsettia crops and turn off the Golden GLO dripper and turn on all the other ones.

We then look down all the odd bench sticky traps. For each sticky card we counted the bugs and identified the bugs to log down. These wasn’t much bugs but the majority of the bugs were fungus gnats. This took us most of the afternoon to do this since we had to count them under a microscope. We then replaced the sticky cards and then tidied up. At this point it was time to close down for the day so we put up the shade curtains and then went through our closing checklist.

Sunday, November 3, 2019

Clocks went back an hour. Arrive and open greenhouse at 7:40 am and it’s actually a bright morning for a change. We begun the checklist like a well-oiled machine at this point. Shade curtains pulled back and ready to rip into our last day with a vengeance.

We began to water the smaller poinsettias on the side bench by way of bottom watering using the flood table. From the bottom, water wicks up through the media and helps encourage roots to grow downward to the outsides. On to E.C. (electrical conductivity) and pH testing. We use this device with an electrode to measure the runoff of one of each of the cultivars of our poinsettia crop. This took better part of the morning and the measurements we took looked good and weren’t outside the ranges we wanted.

We continuously went to task throughout the day on surveying the benches and plants for anything we could notice that was out of place or needing attention without many surprises. We went ahead with composting some of the elephant ears that were not sold, as they get big, we needed space.

After a weekend of greenhouse activity, a thorough cleanup is in order in addition to the general tidying done throughout. Sanitation is next to godliness in a greenhouse and it pays to make sure any algae and debris are removed. This took up rest of the time, in addition to a final closing walk through and shutter closing time bringing our weekend to a close as the cipher continues on.