Skip to main content

Tending Vines

Today I returned for my volunteer shift at the greenhouse of the Conservatory Botanical Collection at the University of Minnesota (St. Paul Campus). My assignment was to tend potted vining plants. In pots of various size, ranging from 6 to 24 inches, the vines have been trained to grow up onto either cables or trellises for support. During my shift, which today lasted three and a half hours, I was able to clean and prune approximately a dozen of the vines.

Since the vines are growing on supports which cannot be moved or taken down, one of the challenges is to reach the top of the vine for cleaning and pruning. Many of the vines reach heights of about 10 feet off the floor. Necessarily, a tall ladder had to be used to access the growing business end of the plants. I was able to arrange a couple of side-by-side ladders so that I could balance a bucket of soapy water on the top of one ladder, and myself on the other ladder.

Some of the vines were quite soiled by sooty black mold and scale insects. The sooty plants took the majority of my time, carefully using a soft nail-brush to scrub the mold and insects off from each individual leaf. It was putsy work, but satisfying at the end of the process to see a now-clean plant. 

The majority of the vines didn't require scrubbing, only a snip and a prune hear and there to reduce the amount of plant material and improve air circulation.

The common grape vine is Vitis vinifera. There are 80 species in this family (Vitaceae), but there are thousands of hybrid varieties used in wine making.


Grape vine on the left, false-jasmine in the middle ground, and real jasmine (Jasminum officinale) on the trellis at the right of the photo.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Sensitive Plant and Common Weed

Mimosa pudica, also commonly called the sensitive plant  was a popular houseplant when I was growing up in the 1970s. It was popular for its ability to quicky change shape by folding up its leaves to protect them from herbivore predators. At the slightest touch the plant is able to expell water from special cells in the leaves, changing the shape from frond-like to a stick-form. The plant creeps along the ground, never for than a foot or so in height. In tropical parts of the world this plant is considered and invasive weed. Today, as I was treating plants to remove pests I happened to touch the leaves of a Mimosa pudica , one with a pretty puff-like flower. Sure enough, the leaves all folded up to almost nothing. Mimosa pudica , the sensitive plant Other more routine chores during my four-hour shift at the U of M Conservatory included cleaning three plants of Hibiscus clayi, native to Hawaii. These three plants in particular have suffered repeated infestations with a variety of in...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bog Monsters

As a layman of botany the idea of carnivorous plants has perplexed me. The capturing and eating of other creatures seems like it ought to be limited to animals, since animals are mobile and plants are not. Almost all plants survive and thrive in the world through photosynthesis. They do not need to feed on animals to survive. But, what about the group of plants that are carnivorous? As stationary plants, why and how do they eat critters? This topic was stimulated by my assignment today at the Conservatory Greenhouse of the University of Minnesota. My task was to clean several large tanks of water filled with aquatic plants. While cleaning the tanks I realized many of the plants were classified as carnivorous . What is it about the aquatic environment that causes plants to eat - in effect - other creatures? The short answer is carnivorous plants evolved in nutrient-poor settings such as pond water which is naturally low in the amount of nitrogen needed to synthesize proteins. To compens...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more