Weekend Practical Blog January 2014

Day One (Friday Jan 21st)

With a yawn we began the day greeted by our instructor Jeffery and

we were given our duties for the weekend. After a brief introduction we set upon our duties with haste, we started by checking the Hydrangea crop and spot watering any plants that looked like they needed it after watering the bench.  After that we sorted out a pile of wood that was thoughtfully covered in 3 feet of snow thanks to our friendly neighborhood snowplow. The task was nothing to us however and we just ‘ploughed’ straight through it like the champs that we are. Then we started on dividing and potting up two flats of pennesetum rubrum and also applying a top dress of fertilizer and finally watering them in and placing them on bottom head for optimal root growth. After that was done we set about the cleaning of any problematic areas that we saw in the greenhouse, washing any dirt that lingered on the ground down the drain where it belongs. We bleached the whiteboard so it shone like new, we washed the pots in the sink and hung them to dry, and such is the life of one who works in a greenhouse on this day.

Day Two (Sunday Feb 1^st)

With a fire in our hearts and a fresh powder of snow on the ground we begun the new day of greenhouse duty, we are the watchers of the glass house brimming with life and opportunities for learning. We were greeted by the sunny and chipper Jessica Rowland who hails from the northern lands. Because we accomplished many of our duties on the first day we were wanting of things to keep our minds occupied and our hands busy so we assisted Jessica for a while. The T building cafeteria’s planters was in dire need of some variety so we decided to liven them up with a fresh Mandeville grown right on campus. To give the planter some fluff we planted several spider grasses around it and finally moved the planter to a more sunny area where the Mandeville would fare better. After that was all said and done Matt and I emptied the full to bursting compost bin into the RTV dumped the excess compost off at the compound. After that task was completed we tested all of the emitters in the greenhouse and soaked the clogged ones in CLR for a while. As the minutes wore down to when we had to leave this warm sanctuary from the cold and venture back to our respective hovels.    

 

Dawn of the Third Day (Sunday Jan 2^nd)

We started off the day with a merry cup of tea to warm us as we went about our opening checklist, to my surprise I found that there were several leaks in the overhead irrigation system and promptly replaced them with new tubes. With that all neatly sorted out I spotted another issue, both of the tree’s had a major scale problem! As I eagerly started to eliminate the pest by spraying it with insecticidal soap, Matt had the clever idea of washing all of the pots that were dirty in the potting room. It took a while but I had finally rid the olive trees of their unfortunate affliction which allowed me to breathe a contented sigh. After a quick lunch break we decided it would be a good idea to tackle the college’s interior-scaping. As it turns out there was a whole lot of dusty and mealy bug infested plants all around campus, which helped the hours just fly on by. That brings this weekend practical to a close, until next time!

Morwyn and Dan's greenhouse weekend practical

Friday, February 7^th, 2014

The students arrived fresh faced and bushy tailed Friday morning, despite weather that would freeze the paws off a polar bear.  Dan and Morwyn retrieved the greenhouse keys from Fanshawe security and began with the day’s opening checklist, which included everything from facility inspection to analyzing hydrangea culture.  Jeff Rowley, resident horticulture technician and endlessly strong mentor, discussed the weekend’s various responsibilities and expectations, along with any tasks that could be accomplished if we found ourselves lacking things to do (this never happens).  After roughly an hour long debriefing, the students sauntered over to D building to retrieve a sleeve of petree dishes and paper filters for an experimental germination test.  The next undertaking was to prune and revive a somewhat sad looking Podocarpus that had undergone considerable environmental stress after being used in the 2014 Landscape Ontario Congress Trade Show.  While Morwyn was working on the plant, she noticed a sizeable but localized mealy bug infestation on the foliage.  Without a moment’s delay she ran to the chemical cabinet for the 50:50 isopropyl alcohol solution and generously doused the besieged plant with a fine spray.  Meanwhile, Lucas Michielsen arrived bearing gifts from Cuddy Gardens in Strathroy.  The students were instructed to take cuttings of the new plant material and attempt to propagate them in their new home.  After cooperatively hosing down the temporarily hospitalized Podocarpus, Dan and Morwyn began the painstakingly slow operation of separating bunches of Dichondra and dipping them into N.1 rooting hormone before plugging them in to flats filled with Pro Mix HP.  Number 1 rooting hormone is used on softwood and fleshy plants to promote root growth for fresh cuttings.  The same process was applied to the three other plant species that Lucas brought, which occupied most of the afternoon.  At some point, another horticulture technician student stopped by to deliver three enormous agave from Parkway Gardens, which were to be repotted and cleaned up before joining their plant siblings in the greenhouse.  All in all a productive day in the office!

                                  

 

Saturday, February 8^th, 2014

The first order of business Saturday morning was to assess the watering situation in the greenhouse.  Our hydrangeas were looking a little thirsty so the Dosatron was put into action; any pots missing drip lines were located and moved to accommodate the emitter spacing.  While the irrigation system did what it does best, Dan and Morwyn hand watered a few things and enjoyed the morning calm.  Next, the students began the prickly task of transplanting the donated agave from their horribly rootbound pots into larger clay vessels.  Equipped with thick gloves and trusted safety glasses, the students carefully cut away the plastic and released the agaves from their potbound prison.  Time flew by, with the blissful greenhouse quiet broken only by the intermittent hiss of the propagation chamber.  Happy in their stylishly comfortable clay pots, the agave were thoroughly inspected for scale and any other pests before being watered and placed on the bench.  After a well-deserved lunch break, we broke open the sleeve of petree dishes and embarked on Mike Pascoe’s latest germination experiment.   A diverse selection of seed was sown, ranging from basil and beans to gazanias and impatiens.  The paper filters were dampened and placed at the bottom of each petree dish to ensure a comfortably humid environment for the little guys.  After careful, meticulous seed sowing, the students moved on to the much anticipated organization and rearrangement of the cacti collection.  Knowing full well the job was too vast to finish in the few hours that were left, Dan and Morwyn laid out and documented which succulents required labels.  Unfortunately, the label maker was being a pain so tags had to be hand written.  A good start was made on the project, and the students left the greenhouse Saturday satisfied.

 

                      

   

Sunday, February 09, 2014

Last day of practical!  Morwyn was a little late due to inclement weather and traffic, but that didn’t stop Dan from spearheading the opening duties with vigor.  Around 9am, the duo plowed through the remaining cactus work and were delighted to be finished by lunch.  The cactus collection is now completely tidy, arranged by genus and family with largest plants on the top shelf and at the back of the bottom bench.  After lunch, the two collectively shifted a large fig at the back of the greenhouse out of the way of the emergency exit doors.  While back there, they noticed a staghorn fern sagging in its metal basket and decided to investigate.  One stepladder trip later, they were astonished and disgusted with what they saw.  Not only was the staghorn horribly underwatered and chlorotic, but it was infested with scale insect.  Thus, the students diligently and lovingly wiped the plant down with the same alcohol solution earlier implemented on Friday’s Podocarpus.  It was then promptly hosed down and given a long overdue hydrating before being returned to its spot at the back of the greenhouse.  Hopefully the scale stays away!  Realizing they were running out of time, Dan and Morwyn made the difficult decision to leave one of their tasks incomplete in order to give the facilities a most thorough clean (prioritizing how they thought Mike Pascoe would have wanted).  It took a little over an hour to bring the greenhouse back to its former, spotless glory, but it was undoubtedly worth it in the end.  The students were gleefully busy this weekend, and look forward to their landscape maintenance weekend practical at the end of April.  Stay tuned to more from the Spriet Family Greenhouse at Fanshawe College!

 

 
 

Gardens of Fanshawe College Blog by: Courtney Preszcator & Evan Macadams

 

Friday January 24^th, 2014:

 

It was our first weekend practical since being back from winter break. There were obvious concerns about being a little “rusty” with the daily duties inside the Fanshawe College greenhouse. As we walked through the greenhouse doors all concerns were pushed aside with the thought of being able to spend the next 3 days doing what we love!

 

Before we started our opening checklist, Jeff gave us a run through of the tasks needed to be done over the weekend and pointed out some issues in the greenhouse that needed immediate TLC (tender, love and care)!! From the sounds of what we were going to be doing this weekend it was going to be a lot of cultural care for our plants! We were heading in to start on our beautification of the Banana plants that required some pruning. But wait! Through the greenhouse window we could see the arrival of our lumber that’s going to be used for our Landscape Field Construction class (spoiler alert!). We geared up and tromped through the snow to help Jeff unload the shipment. The wind seemed to be picking on us even hidden between the H and M buildings and burning our cheeks so we moved fast! With the fluctuations in temperatures and not wanting to move the lumber from place to place we decided to tarp it where it was by the Horticulture Technician tool room. We were glad to be done and hurried back to the warm greenhouse to continue where we had left off (with the Banana plants).

 

Now when you think of pruning you are picturing us removing dead or unattractive growth. You would be correct in that assumption. The pruning we were doing on the Banana plant was almost like the peeling of the layers of an onion. If you’re not familiar with Banana (Genus: Musa) plants they are tropical plants whose stems are actually just layers of leaf stalks! Beginning to understand the onion layers analogy? These leaf stalks also act as structural support for the plant. Make sure to be careful not to remove too many layers when pruning or you will weaken your plants stem.

         

For those of you following the Gardens of Fanshawe College blog you will know that we recently attended and did an incredible Mediterranean build at the Landscape Ontario Congress. The display was beautiful but the behind-the-scenes situation is a lot of nursing our plants used in the build back to health! We went through the entire greenhouse and checked to see if any watering was needed and came to the conclusion we need to re-pot some of our stock plants used at Congress. The end result was well worth the meticulous care. A high five after a job well done and we were headed home for the night.

              

 Saturday January 25^th, 2014:

 

What a horrible drive to work it was this morning! The fact that we are in the Horticulture Technician program should hint at what our favourite season is (we’ll give you a hint it isn’t winter). Thank goodness for being inside the greenhouse! We formed a game plan, put our tunes on and got to work. Shortly into the morning Jrow (Jessica Rowland) arrived to do some interiorscape care. We gladly took the chance to help her transplant some tropical plants. It would have been a sight to see if she had attempted to move these large trees herself. We don’t doubt she would have gotten it done. It would have taken some muscle and a little creative thinking.

 

Our afternoon was full of pink! ....Pink Hydrangeas that is. We have a saying in our program, “The hand that holds the hose controls the crop”. So we were going through our Hydrangea crop and amending the soil levels in the pots to allow for water to be absorbing into the soil but not overflowing. A good tip from Michael Pascoe is to leave at least the tip of your index finger of space between the top of the soil and the rim of the pot. Taking care to center our labels and straighten our rows on the drip-lines along the way. While the Hydrangeas were being tended to we were also flushing the drip-lines on our empty benches with a bleach/water mixture. All of the drip-lines managed to get a good cleaning. Cleaning is a huge component of a successful greenhouse. Somehow we managed to unload two metal carts with bulb crates full of Canna’s. We watered them in to start in the process of breaking dormancy.

 Sunday January 26^th, 2014:

After such an exciting weekend to describe we get to the day of the week that almost everyone ends up doing the exact same thing. Cleaning. We were thorough. The benches were rinsed off, the floors were washed and the ledges were cleaned with a bleach/water solution to disinfect and clean at the same time. The tractor bay received a good scrub with some degreaser too! After all of the cleaning and dusting (we may have upset some spiders) it was time to go home. Or to be more specific, it was time to clean the snow off of our cars so that we could go home.

 

Bring on Summer!

Greenhouse Practical Blog - Jordan and Corey

January 17-19, 2014

Friday Jan 17

We started our weekend off by taking down the remaining blackout curtains from the greenhouse. This proved to be a difficult task maneuvering our ladder to allow us to reach the top curtains. After conquering the curtains we pruned back a significant amount of the foliage on the Schefflera that had been damaged by the cold on the trip to congress. We were also tasked to prune and train the Poinsettia standard to a more rounded form.

 

After this we took several crates of Alocasia and proceeded to clean them and lay them out along the bench to allow them to continue to dry out. We then started and finished our most daunting task of the day which was re-potting the Hydrangea’s from 4” pots into 6” pots which proved to be time consuming.  

 

Saturday Jan 18

As we completed our morning checklist we discovered that the propagation chamber at the far end of the greenhouse was below temperature. We discovered that the heating mat wasn’t producing any heat so we re-organized the potting room propagation chamber and moved the flats into it to keep them warm. We then proceeded to clean the benches by removing all of the infested and dying Lamb’s Ears and Lungwort making space for our stock plants. Once we had opened up some space on the benches we organized and grouped together all of the hanging baskets. Unfortunately the snow removal crews struck again and snapped a small Ginko tree at the base. We removed the tree and composted it but unfortunately the ground was frozen solid and we were unable to remove the stakes. Our final task for the day was to take the various remaining poinsettias and prune them into standards which was a fun learning experience for both of us.

 

 

Sunday Jan 19

After completing our opening checklist we inspected the drip nozzles on all of the remaining open benches for damaged or clogged drippers. Once we had checked the drippers we began to move the majority of the tropical plants onto the bench and inserting drippers. We also removed damaged foliage and performed some routine maintenance on the tropical as we moved them to their new home. With this completed the greenhouse was looking a bit more neat and organized than when we started.

 

 

We finished up our day by cleaning out the trailer and the tool room from congress, cleaning up our mess in the greenhouse and learning how to operate the seeding machine. When everything was said and done we had a very productive weekend and completed all of our tasks!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

Weekend Practical Blog

Jessica Rowland & Dylan McLeod

 

Jan. 10, 14 - Jan. 12, 14

Well, school’s finally back in and the greenhouse practical’s have begun! The second year Horticulture technicians came back early to set up our Congress display in Toronto, which for this weekend left Dylan and JRow the duty of trying to organize the greenhouse once again. Some of the duties that were left included organizing and placing the Congress plants on drip lines, removing the mulch left inside the pots, and leaving the greenhouse spotless. 

On Friday January 10, 2014 Fanshawe College got its first hydrangea crop in.  For our first step with the hydrangeas,’ we got the 4 inch pots out of their boxes and into the greenhouse with one drip line in each of the pots. The plan for the crop is to be transplanted into larger pots such as a 6 inch or 1 gallon but first our fearless leader Mr. Pascoe wants to inspect the crop to determine the best course of action. 

  

On Saturday January 11, 2014 Dylan and JRow potted up spider plants that were in 4 pack cells to 4 inch pots.  Once we were done potting up the spider plants and reorganizing the propagated cacti, we cleaned up the Alocasia's. After lunch we took to the task of starting our cleanup of the greenhouse floor and potting room. After a little elbow grease, our hard work payed off with the greenhouse in mint condition for the beginning of 2014!

 

 

On Sunday January 12, 2014 we started to take down the shade curtains since our poinsettias are finished for this year. After this Dylan and JRow split up to conquer as many of our tasks as possible. While JRow was seeing to some Interiorscape issues such as culture and watering, Dylan was doing some finishing clean up touches. Later on in the day the Dracaena that we took to Congress needed to be stabilized due to all the moving, so Dylan got to play Tarzan while JRow packed soil.  Overall, we had a great weekend!

  

Greenhouse Practical – Eric S. & Jessica S. December 6,7 & 8, 2013

Well here we are, end of term one and on the last weekend practical of the year. The weekend has turned cold with a brisk wind feeding our chills. It proved to be a productive weekend with a busy Saturday for Poinsettia sales and a tidy greenhouse. Upon everyone’s holiday farewell we we’re slow to get going on Friday morning, but made up for it with our enthusiastic selling skills! First thing first the poinsettias were priority, checking and watering those that are thirsty. To our surprise, we had a furry visitor. Bruce! J-Rows new companion perked up our spirits and got us smiling for the day.

Jessica tackled the task of rearranging the annuals on to the benches so they could be fed through drip lines while Eric prepared seeds for storage. The hanging baskets were all checked and treated where needed and after a rather slow sales day, our Friday came to an end with the holiday feeling a few days away. Saturday was a good day of sales with us jumping from task to task. After checking over the crop, Eric gathered up the last of the gator bags and got them ready to put away for the winter while Jess took care of some pathos cuttings and then spaced and organized the crop. Finishing up some seed collection to put in storage, we got the orders for delivery ready to go. With the weather treating us a little more festive, Saturday was over.

Sunday was quiet. Unfortunately there were no customers to be seen. This gave us the opportunity to clean, clean, clean! Jess did a great job on the floor that was beginning to look pretty outdoorsy! Eric finished up some Interiorscape paying special attention to our poor poinsettias in front of the library and touched up some painting in preparation for the great Congress exhibition. After a quick wash, the trailer was shining and looking sharp!

We’d like to say thank you to those that supported us by purchasing poinsettias. Also a Merry Christmas and happy new year as well!

Weekend Practical - Ajay, Jordan and Johnny. November 29 - December 1, 2013

On Friday, November 29, we had sold 10+ poinsettias which is the weekend best and we had the chance to make some happy customers. We also had a nice surprise, which was Jeff’s new pet Lenny who kept us company and made our day go by a little quicker. Jeff had to give us the morning run down of the daily operations such as; opening the till, daily check list, watering plants, etc. After that we were on our own! As far as daily tasks it was a productive day. Jordan tackled the task of printing up signs as well as laminating then for the benches, Johnny and I started the daunting task of painting congress materials. This would turn out to be a weekend’s worth of work.

Saturday, the 30th, Poinsettia sales slowed to about half of the amount on the first day. None the less we all kept busy by making stunning new planter boxes that included three or more poinsettias. While Johnny worked diligently on the big job of painting Jordan and I held down the greenhouse. We kept up with watering plants, cleaning windows, and painting additional pots for congress. We also started to sand the large white, steal, table located in the middle of the working area in preparation for painting on Sunday.

On Sunday, our final day, we had yet another productive day. We started by cleaning ledges and sweeping in abnormal spots to clean the place up a bit. Johnny unfortunately had yet another full day of painting. We completed smaller jobs such as; collecting gator bags from around campus and finishing any touch ups on the pots we painted the day before. Jordan had the exciting job of watering the plants indoors while Ajay stayed in the greenhouse to help any potential customers. Unfortunately poinsettia sales came to a halt today. The biggest job today would be painting the work bench. We did it with time to spare so we decided to clean some more! This concluded our weekend practical and overall we believe we did a fine job.

We hope you agree! - Ajay, Johnny, Jordan