Well, it’s the last week of the summer work term for us lucky gardeners here at Fanshawe. Eric Stacey here to say that it has been an awesome summer working with great people! I feel very privileged to have had such an amazing opportunity to work at both the college and at Cuddy’s. To the staff and my co-workers, I say thanks and I am looking forward to the promising year ahead!

 

           This week has flown by. Monday, while Lucas was on a holiday, Dave Comfort and I had set out to do a quick clean-up after giving all the thirsty plants a drink. We cleaned and organized tools and plants in and around the hoop house. We were pleased to see a familiar face stop in for a visit. It was Jack, who we all miss so much already!

Tuesday was an exciting day on our road trip to Whistling Gardens and RBG. We all piled into vans and had a great time enjoying the remarkable Whistling Gardens and the shear amazement of RBG. With a day of grass cutting ahead on wednesday, I took in as much enjoyment as possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Thursday, Lucas, Dave and I went to Lucas’ hometown of Parkhill to install a garden bed for The Parkhill Anago Therapeutic Care Residence. It surrounds an arbor in tribute to Rob Chilvers, a Teacher and a special friend to the BEE. The job went well and it looks great!

 

In closing, I would like to thank the wonderful staff at Fanshawe and all my fellow co-workers for making this summer fun, informative and inspiring. Best of luck to everyone in the upcoming year!  

 



Friday, August 9th, 2013

After the long weekend I was back for my second week at the A.M. (Mac) Cuddy Gardens, and we spent our time performing the essential maintenance critical to ensure preparations for the second open garden event of the summer go smoothly. As we share parking lots with Cuddy Farms, this means we also help them out when they have an issue that needs attention. This Tuesday, that issue was the rear garden bed. Planted decades before any of our student gardeners were born, it is home to several black pines in sad decline thanks to diplodia tip blight, as well as a large number of junipers starting to suffer from lack of sun. The junipers themselves were thick enough to act as a net, catching the needles and smothering themselves under a thick layer of pine litter. After weeding and hedge trimming in front of the hatchery, we began to tackle this bed, limbing up trees and cleaning up the junipers as well as performing some needed pruning.

This job continued onto Wednesday morning before we were forced indoors by an intense (but brief) thunderstorm, giving us time to sweep and organize the tractor bay.

Next, we turned our attention to the iris border, where a number of Gymnocladus dioicus suckers had reached a height of six feet or more. Lucas removed them with an eye towards growing them in pots for eventual sale before moving on to pruning a number of other shrubs backing on to the irises as Dave and I painstakingly weeded and hoed the unmulched bed.

Thursday saw Lucas on campus, leaving us by ourselves at the gardens. We tackled the jobs he had set out for us methodically and efficiently, weeding the upper lawn, vertical edging and weeding the rose garden, and cultivating the dry garden.

 Once the soil was dry enough after lunch, Dave was able to mow the upper lawn while I took the line trimmer out to the obstacles by the road and the lower lawn.



Various annuals such as Cannas and Colocasia edging the upper lawn

We were just able to start vertical edging the perennial border, noting it required attention, before the day was done.

On my final day here, we picked up right where we had left off, with the vertical edging, weeding, and cultivation of the perennial border. In the middle I made a sweep of the Louise Weekes garden as well, making sure it was nice and clean for the open garden next weekend.

 One of the great things about this property is the great variety of plants mean no matter what time of the year, there is always something of interest. Late summer is a great time for blooms in the perennial border, which I found eye-popping.

That finishes my week here, but I'll be back in just a few days for the big push ahead of the Open Garden, August 17th from 10am-4pm. Hope to see you all there so you can enjoy the gardens as much as we have!

-Eric Abram

Chastetree, Vitus agnus-castus, on the edge of the Rose Garden

Arizona Sun Blanket Flower,
Gaillardia x grandiflora, playing host to a fully-loaded bee

Hi folks, It’s Courtney checking in with you again back out at Cuddys for the week! As most of you know by now (from following our always entertaining yet educational blog!) each Student Gardener from our main Fanshawe College campus gets the opportunity to work two separate weeks out here. Unfortunately for me, this is my second and final week! Of course I will be coming back to Strathroy with all of the Student Gardeners on August 17^th for the last A.M. Mac Cuddy Gardens Open House for the season and we’re hoping to see everyone out again! If you didn’t come to the one in June be sure to come out for this one you don’t want to miss out! (And yes…there are still plenty of plants to be sold!)

Now let’s discuss the week we just had! Dave and I started Monday morning out in front of the Cuddy offices weeding the perennial grasses. A problem we’re having out here as well as back at Fanshawe in London is Bind Weed. A nasty weed that is next to impossible to remove from your plants! Bind Weed also has a root system that is next to impossible to completely remove each time. It’s a never ending battle that we intend to win. Dave and I removed as much as we could but unfortunately had to remove several clumps of the perennial grass to take back to the hoop house to clean up. Now what I thought would only take half of the day ended up taking the entire day but those gardens have been restored to their previous weed-free state!

On Tuesday we had our co-worker Jaimi here at Cuddys to help out for the day. Jaimi and I had the opportunity to help Lucas set up the propagation chamber in the hoop house for the beginning of our Annual cuttings and a few Perennial cuttings. For our propagation chamber we used a foam board for the bottom, 1 layer of poly, a heating mat, another layer of poly, and then a final black poly mat for the bottom of the chamber. We also had to set up the misting system inside the propagation chamber and Lucas was nice enough to show both of us how it worked.

 The top portion of our propagation chamber

 

Jaimi showing off her muscles!

 

 Placing the top of the chamber on the bottom portion we made just minutes earlier

 

We then had to set up the water source for our misting system. Lucas did the final testing to make sure all of the nozzles were working correctly. Some of them weren’t up to snuff so we replaced them.

 Lucas inspecting the misting nozzles

 

 Jaimi and Lucas replacing the misting nozzles that were not working correctly

 

Next was the incredibly fun part, we actually got to propagate! Lucas walked Jaimi and I around and had us collect at least 10 samples from as many annuals as we could. Our propagation collection included Wizard Mix Coleus, Plectranthus, Solenostemon, etc. With bulb crates in hand we spread out and took our cuttings. Then we headed back to the hoop house to pot them up in our 50/50 Perlite and ProMix media. The propagation chamber is looking fairly colourful now that we have it stocked with all sorts of cuttings!

 Good old propagation!

 

 

Wednesday and Thursday seemed to fly by with a combination of weeding and even more propagation. We had another co-worker come from Fanshawe on Thursday! Jess Shields joined us for more propagation and some Rose dead heading. When we take our cuttings we fill out paperwork for the BG data base that includes information such as when we took the cuttings, how many cuttings we took, the media we used as well as monitoring the cuttings and later filling out the success rate.

  Having some fun while filling out our BG database paperwork

 

  Jess Shields taking cuttings from Heptacodium miconioides (Seven-Son Flower)

 

The week has come to an end and here we are at Friday. Oh, by the way, Happy August everyone! Dave and I are finishing up odds and ends left over from Thursday . There's a ton of line trimming, The Alpine Garden needs some weeding , as well as some dead heading! So this is Courtney, your Cuddy Gardens correspondent for the week, signing off! To all of our readers enjoy your long weekends and stay safe! Until next time….