Dunking and re-purposing plant crates for use as risers in the greenhouse

Coordinator A... retrieved several plastic plant crates, I estimate around 30 of them, from a local commercial greenhouse. He intends to use them as plant risers in Collection Room 2, the ancient rainforest biome. The plants in that room grow especially well and often crowd each other out of light and space. His thought is to lift some of the plants up on risers to create layers of plants. This will allow some of the smaller plants access to air and light.

My task for the day was to clean the plastic plant crates. They had been sitting outdoors, collecting grit and leaves. Many of them had paper labels glued to them, which looked a bit unsightly for an academic greenhouse collection. The labels had to go too.

A... brought me to the special room for cleaning and sterilizing plant pots. The room has industrial sinks and hoses as well as large oven-like sterilizer machines. I used the sinks and hoses to clean the crates, then dunk them into an antiseptic soap solution, then finally rinse them again. The result was relatively clean crates, free from outdoor pathogens (largely), ready for use as plant risers.

Dunking seems to have been the word for the day. I had baked two-dozen almond biscotti and brought them for the crew. I wrote a note on the container asking that they be dunked, to avoid dental injuries!

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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

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