Repositioning plants

A introduced me to another volunteer (C...) who has expert knowledge about orchids. He was instructing E... on the details of orchid care. C... is the greenhouse's expert orchid grower, with many award ribbons to his credit.

I helped Al... and F... to move the floor-based small trees in C2. Their location was cleared, cleaned, and replaced by a waist-high table onto which we placed small plants. The space created on the adjacent low-table we placed the small trees up off of the concrete, presumably to allow better drainage, air circulation and pest resistance. Edible plants were placed at the south end of the low table. Bananas, gingers, and marantas were placed at the north end of the waist-high table. To make room for the waist-high table, we also had to remove one of the black troughs. The water plants within it (an aquatic fern Salvinia minima. “water spangles”) were relocated to a glass aquarium situated on the waist-high table.

I scrubbed the sooty mold off from the leaves of one of the small plants in C2, an understory plant, located near a group of orchids on a low table.

While the crew were having their usual Thursday meeting in the workroom I occupied myself by cleaning under the new waist-high table in C2, pruning dead leaves throughout the room, and picking up fallen leaves from the floor and pots. Later, I swept the path in D2, and pruned dead leaves in D2-4.

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Rebuilding the support for vanilla vines

Raining in February The morning began with a walk in the rain from my car to the Conservatory greenhouses - in the month of February. According to the calendar, we should be in the depths of winter. The precipitation today should be snow not rain. The storm system that we're experiencing is probably related to drenching rains moving inland from the west coast. I met Coordinator A... at the door of the Conservatory. His office desk faces one of the main doors to the building. He cannot escape observing everyone who enters...poor guy, it must be distracting for him. Anyway, as soon as I entered the building we started to discuss his plan for my activity of the morning. He offered me the project of rebuilding the support for vanilla vines which have been suffering from overexposure to sunlight and dry air. A bit of background The vanilla plant (Vanilla planifolia) is in the orchid family. It is native to Central America and Mexico. The seed pods were used by the Aztecs to flavor coc

Frankincense and Myrtle: Fragrant Treasures

If you were raised in the Christian religion, you've probably heard of frankincense and myrrh. But, do you know much about them, beyond being fragrant commodities as precious as gold? Until today, I could not have described frankincense, myrrh, or citronella. But, by the time I was finished with my volunteer shift at the U of M Conservatory greenhouse I knew more about them. However, I will have to wait for another time to actually see a myrrh tree. I'm not sure if the Conservatory has a myrrh tree. I do know myrrh is in the Burseraceae family, the same family as the frankincense tree. They are not in the myrtle family as the name would suggest. The myrtles (or Myrtaceae) are the gum trees of the Australasia, one which gives us citronella (see below). Maintenance of small trees The day's duties assigned to me were to provide general light maintenance to a group of small trees located in the desert and subtropical rooms of the greenhouse. Maintenance included pruning and mak

Infection control in the Conservatory, from mundane to amazing

Volunteering at the University of Minnesota's Conservatory Greenhouse As mentioned in prior blog posts, for the past three years I've been volunteering for a few hours a week at the Conservatory greenhouse at the St. Paul campus of the U of M. This blog is about activities there, and the many fascinating and beautiful plants in the collection. A little background about plant infections Everyone who has cared for a plant, from houseplant lovers to professional nurserymen, has learned the hard lesson that plant pests and diseases are an inescapable fact of life. All plants, domestic or wild, are susceptible to the infectious agents and parasites. Plants in their native habitats are largely protected by the ecosystems surrounding them, where pests do not have the luxury unfettered consumption. Plants grown indoors have been removed from their ecosystem and they are sitting ducks for parasites to proliferate unchecked. Indoor gardens rely entirely on pest control methods with var

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