Friday, September 16^th : We started our Friday morning receiving a tour of the areas we would be working this weekend. Each of us then went to work on our own. One of us aerated all of the green turf around Cuddy Gardens while the other harvested some squash to be sold at Fanshawe. Some general weeding was completed along a gravel path to our greenhouse. The fence for our compost material was in great need of a new coat of paint, so we all worked together to paint it a fresh new black. The plants within and around our greenhouses needed a watering before we completed our day.

 

 

 

 

Saturday, September 17^th: Saturday was quite a rainy one. The rain has worked to our advantage though. A couple of gardens had to be weeded, Shaped and smoothed. The moist soil made it easier for us to remove all the sneaky weeds such as Convolvulus (bindweed), Taraxacum (dandelions) and clover. And the rain helped to shape the soil in the gardens better. We stared cleaning out the rose garden. Each of us had two beds of roses in our care. In the end we completed the edging and now the rose garden is looking fabulous again. The perennial garden has also been weeded. We did find one lily beetle insect though. We hope to deal with them soon.

 

 

 

 

Sunday, September 18^th : Today, our final day, we cleaned the rock garden out and the dry garden. Again we needed to remove all or as many of the weeds as we could. We raked some of falls first dropped leaves off of the rock garden and pebble paths. We finished our final day by recycling a huge plastic sheet, cleaning returning all of the tools and returning them to their rightful spot. We have noticed some reversion in some of our plants. Our ‘Curly Tops’ cypress (Chamaecyparis pisifera) has started to revert but we have removed the problematic part. Reversion happens when the traits of the parent plant start to show on the specimen, resulting in part of the plant appearing different. The reversion must be removed or else it will continue to get larger and out compete the rest of the plant! One group of plants notorious for reverting are the variegated euonymus, which will revert back to a green foliage nearly constantly. Since we took out the reverted segment, our cypress will continue to be curly!

 

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