Sept 20-22

Adam and Evan

The day started like any other waking with a sudden jolt at the sound of an alarm going off and fighting the urge of rolling over and going to back to sleep but today was not just any old day; it was the first day of three working at the majestic Cuddy Gardens. Upon arriving at Cuddy Gardens we met with Lucas who led us to our place of work.  On our way we noticed the weather was grim, Lucas noticed our concern and jokingly remarked “don’t worry the hoop house acts as a force field”.   We both nervously chuckled.  When we arrived at the greenhouse Lucas gave us our standing orders, first of which was to repot the cone flowers (Echinacea purpurea 'PowWow Wild Berry' and E. purpurea 'PowWow White' )  from their current 6” standards, which they had outgrown, into 1 gallon pots. About 20 minutes into our work we were interrupted by a flash of lightning and were told to come into the house until it was safe to return to work. For our research assignment we were asked to find out the proper method of seed sowing for Magnolia tripedela and M. accuminata. After a quick bit of researching we discovered that magnolia seeds required cold stratification for 3-6 months before germination.  With this knowledge in hand, we began husking the seed coat for both species of Magnolia in order to begin stratification. After the lightning storm finished we stormed (see what we did there?) the greenhouse and planted the seeds in 7x14 Styrofoam seed plugs with pre-mixed peat and sand media that was lightly misted afterwards for stratification and later placed on the floor of the greenhouse for overwintering. We then quickly  potted some Sweet Birch (Betula lenta) seedlings into 1 gallon pot and then drove home as quickly as legal speed limit would let us.

 

                On the brisk Saturday morning of the 21^st we woke to high water levels and bleak skies. After a meek greeting to our fellow comrades, we set upon our first task of repotting the coneflowers and blanket flower (gaillardia x grandiflora 'arizona sun') perennials into larger 1 gallon pots.  As the hours rolled by we managed to finish off all the perennial flowers with time left over before the break to organize them. After a short Tim Horton’s breaks we got to work once again, this time we broke ground with our next task of organizing the perennials that were in a state of disarray. We began by sorting all of the mismatched flats into their proper genus and species, and then after that was completed we organized all of the odd matches into single flats according to size. We then took Acer griseum seedlings along a few surprise Cercis canadensis and potted them into half gallon pots after we took flats of grass (Panicum virgatum and Miscanthus sinensis) and divided them using a spade and put them into gallon pots. Also it is worth mentioning that just as we left for the day the skies cleared and we got a little peek of sunshine as we trudged back home.

 

Arriving Sunday morning we were greeted by the sun …ha psyche, well that would have been nice. It was another rainy morning. We started off the day by taking a bulk bin of day lilies (Hemerocallis ‘Dublin Elaine’ and Hemerocallis ‘Mysterious Veil’), dividing them and putting them in into 1 gallon pots (sensing a theme here?). Once we finished repotting the lilies we found more bulk bins with grass and proceeded to divide them and pot them in….you guessed it one gallon pots! As the final day drew to a close we organized all of the grasses and daylilies that we potted, cleaned up our workspace and tools and then promptly started working on this very blog. Final thoughts about the weekend, weather could have been better but the overall busyness kept our minds mostly occupied.