City Gardener

Today, a few days before Christmas, the weather turned very cold. The high today is expected to be -6F. Like other fool-hardy Minnesotans I ventured out to the greenhouse to fulfill my appointed duties. However, when I arrived there, only Curator J.. was in the building. He asked if I would stay and do a bit of sweeping, which I did for about two hours. There wasn’t a lot of debris under the benches, but every bench had a little bit. So the benches in all four collection rooms needed attention. I also swept the workroom. I have to state the floors of the greenhouse look much tidier since J’s arrival, thanks in part to a leaf blower recently introduced to the greenhouse. He has made a significant effort to get pots up off of the floors onto low benches. The floors clearly are being washed more frequently compared to before his arrival. It is important for the greenhouse because it reduces the biomass on the floor for the proliferation of pests and fungus, which then spread to the plants...

Both Director A... and B... were back in the greenhouse this week, having been away last week. My first task was to pot a couple of cactus-like plants in the aster family: Kleinia pendula (inchworm plant); and K stapeliiformis (pickle plant). Both are finger-like succulents with spines like a cactus or euphorbia. They originate from Africa. Each variety had approx 8 10-inch stems which (previously calloused overnight) I inserted into an arid mix, all in one terra cotta pot.  The plants were donated by Madison (I assume UW at Madison WI). I was asked to bury a label deep in the base of each pot with the plant’s name, date, and my initials. I also repotted a couple of small agave-like plants in the asparagus family, which originate from S. America: Furcraea guerrerensis. They were each planted into 6-inch terracotta pots with an arid mix. The plants were donated by Madison (I assume UW at Madison WI). I was asked to bury a label deep in the base of each pot with the plant’s name, dat...

Before arriving for this weeks activites in the greenhouse, I was informed some of the staff had been exposed to covid, and were home in quarantine. Curator J...  had issued an email earlier in the week, which outlined the current guidelines regarding covid. My first task was to empty a large bathtub-size tank. It contained a few water lilies which failed to grow well. They remained too small to be adequate examples of their species. The tank also features a small floating fern. A asked me to save the fern into a glass jar, along with the tank’s bubble tube. The lilies were discarded. I emptied the tank and washed the sides of the adhering algal growth, rinsed the tank, and left it on its side to dry. I repotted a couple of small hibiscus plants native to Kauai (Hibiscus clayi), Hawaii (family Malvaceae). They were placed in new plastic “azalea” pots with relatively shallow depth (5 inches or so). A asked for soil 1a. She also asked us to desist from using paper towels in the botto...

I took my directions for the morning from the posted list of tasks that can be completed in “15 min”. Some of these items take more than 15 minutes in my experience, for example the soil I spent the morning refilling potting soil mixes #3 and #4. The #3 mix is the epiphyte mix. The #4 mix is the conifer mix (see photos). Both mixes include charcoal, which is difficult to work with indoors. The small storage room became a fog of dust, both from charcoal and perlite dust. Luckily I had a good mask which filtered much of the air going to my lungs. But my hair and clothes were coated in dust. I think the best way to work with charcoal mixes is to mix them outdoors or in a very large well ventilated room. The storage room does appear to have a built-in fan, but it seems to take a lot of dust to kick it into automatic operation. I repotted the bird-of-paradise palm, Strelitzia reginae, into a much larger pot using a mix of the standard #1 soil mix and the bark mix.