Kyle Haskett and KyleFelton      

Friday: 

                I promptly awoke from my slumber and dashed to my car! I had a schedule to keep you see, for today was the first of many trips to the mystical Cuddy Gardens! First on my list was to meet my compatriots at home base one “The Greenhouse”. With a flash I raced as fast as the old man ahead of me would allow, curse these infernal one 2 lane roads! I arrived at home base one and picked up my fellow companions on my quest to the gardens. (We would car pool you see as we are very environmentally conscious). With miles of road between us and our goal we would have to hurry to arrive early for our work.

We were greeted by “The keeper” of the gardens Lucas who briefed us on our many tasks. Our First quest was to be-rid the oasis of shrubbery from all the terrible storm damage! Lucas lead us to the site, it appeared as if a bomb had exploded! A cascade of scattered branches and bark created an eerie graveyard at our feet. We would clean up the poor Silver maple and return the gardens to their magnificent stature. So we heaved and we dragged the shattered remains of the tree, gathering the branches together. If we were to cause any more damage to the terrain we would do anything we could to minimize the damage.  With Lucas wielding the Kubota Tractor we made quick work of the damage and set off onto another quest.

Lucas briefed us on our individual missions. Our first task was to rake up all the scattered apples and walnuts around the property. It was a minefield! Never have I seen so much wasted goodness! All the apples I could not eat, it was truly a sad sight to see. As Kyle and I raked and shoveled apples we were bombarded with yellow jackets! They rained down from the heavens like a plague to feast upon the splendor of fruit.  Despite us not fully knowing if we were allergic to bee stings we rushed to finish our work.  Lucas then briefed us on our remaining missions for the weekend, our main priority… “THE ROSE GARDEN” a task so daunting we would not dare spend less than 16 hours of work on it! (Seriously we took both days making sure it was PRIMO) We finished cleaning up the apples for the rest of the day.

 

Saturday:

It was time! We made the long trek to the gardens and made it with most limbs still intact. However Kyle lost both his eyes in a tragic Gardening incident involving a YUCCA and had to get glass replacements! (Nah ok he just got contacts, but he was looking spiffy) It was time to face “THE ROSE GARDEN” Lucas had warned us of the dangers to come, we were about to embark on a war against the Japanese beetle. The roses were coated with the oily appearing mass of insects! Our weapon… soap and water, we would mercilessly drown any and all beetles in the struggle to save the ROSES. As we began to dead head the beds we meticulously planned and double checked each plant before moving on. It was no big deal really we only had to impress Lucas and Mike and all the donors on Tuesday… but no pressure. By the end of the morning we had filled most of our soap bucket with beetles and were feeling pretty good about ourselves. We moved on from the beetles to our next victims, weeds! This took up the rest of the day; with many hours of being bent over and prodded by thorns( fit in a plant profile in there somewhere) we were super excited for the next day’s work. (First I needed about 2 days’ worth of sleep).

 

Sunday:

Waking up 36 hours earlier than I had hoped for I rushed back to the gardens, I only had to re enjoy the hour and a half drive. Back to work we started to weed the rose beds, perfection was our goal and we were going to push for it. As I moved onto the 2^nd bed Kyle expertly used the vertical trimmers to clean up the edges. (But seriously if you want to know how to use vertical trimmers go see Connor) Many hours of work later constantly rechecking our work, we finished the garden beds and moved onto other tasks. Filling out our safety checklist for the blower I began to air sweep all of the paths and hard surfaces, while Kyle began prepping a few sites for seeding. (Air sweeping is way more fun than regular sweeping).

                With the paths clear and the seeding completed we began to disinfect and clean our tools, water the plants, and vacuum the floors. With the long weekend of work at Cuddys closing we were all eager for a good night sleep and rushed back to home base one where we would go our separate ways. 

 

 

                                             Obedient Plant                Kyle Haskett/ Kyle Felton

Michael’s opinion:

Physostegia virginiana is a very tall vigorously spreading perennial with late seasons interest. Large clusters of fragrant purple flowers bloom in late summer and persist well into fall, creating a large interest in an otherwise lacking period in terms of flora. With its malleable form any landscaper can shape how they want the plant to appear at any given time.

Genus: Physostegia    Family: Lamiaceae    USDA: Z3-Z9    Canadian hardiness: Z3-Z6
Species: virginiana  Common name: Obedient Plant  

Category: Herbaceous Perennial        

Height: 60- 112 cm   Spread: 61 – 92 cm   Growth: Fast

Flowering period: August – September   Sun: Full sun

Origin: Missouri Native

Pests/ problems: relatively disease free, can be affected by rust, and can be prone to flopping if not staked.

Landscape: Physostegia virginiana can be used as a massing plant, or collected as cut flowers. Obedient plant helps to bring a vibrant color to areas with partial shade, and late autumn season interest. Well used in a wild flower garden and its vigorous spreading nature helps with mass plantings.

Propagation:  Damp stratify seeds at 40 °F for 3 months. Clumps can be divided in early spring.

Habitat: Found in moist meadows and clay based wetlands in southern Ontario.

Shape: Upright, slender. Prone to flopping if not staked.

ID characteristics: tall slender stalks, malleable flower positions, flowers snapdragon in appearance.

Flower description: Spikes, purple, snapdragon in appearance. Clusters of purple malleable flowers grow 60 cm in height.

Leaf Description: long spear shaped, simple, serrate

Bibliography:

1)      "Physostegia virginiana." Missouri Botanical Garden. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2013. .

2)      "Physostegia virginiana (Fall obedient plant) | NPIN." Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center - The University of Texas at Austin. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2013. .

3)      "Physostegia virginiana (Obedient plant, False dragonhead) - Fine Gardening Plant Guide." Fine Gardening: Expert garden plant advice, tips, and ideas from Fine Gardening magazine, including design, care, and how-to garden techniques.. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2013. .

 

Dylan McLeod and Kayla Teves

Friday:

T’was Friday the 13^th. The air was cold and brisk on our faces as we marched up to our destination for the weekend: The Strathroy Cuddy Gardens.

Our day began with a walk around the micro nursery and very thorough instructions from Lucas for our weekend tasks.

As we listened intently (notepad in hand) we wrote down page after page of the tedious tasks to be done. Our work was cut out for us, but we were excited to get started!

We learned that majority of our weekend would be dedicated to organizing the endless piles of flower pots stored in the greenhouse. They were located under the workbenches in large, unorganized mounds. But this was about to change.

Dylan and I got started on organizing the biggest sized pots, in order of shape, size and colour. 5 gallon, 4 gallon and 3 gallon pots (hundreds of them) were stacked into neat rows, at the back corner of the hoop house. This was our starting point.

Our day continued in that sequence, down to the 1 gallon round, and 1 gallon square pots. This was all the organizing that was to be done today, for there were thirsty plants waiting to be watered outside…

 

 

 

Saturday:

 

Bright eyed and bushy tailed, we were back at it. Now that we have all the larger sized pots organized, it was time to do the same for the remaining smaller ones; filtering out the broken, random, and misshaped. At lunch time, the plants located inside the hoop house were watered. We then had the fun challenge of taking apart some old wooden benches, in order to throw them away into the burn pile. We continued sorting the small pots until our day came to an end.

 

 

Sunday:

 

Our final day began with finalizing the sorting that needed to be done. At last the entire place was organized and looking sharp by lunch! After lunch, we began transplanting Shasta daisies from 5” pots to 1 gallon pots. Each plant was deadheaded, labeled and given a fresh start in their new soil and larger pots. Hopefully they’ll thrive over the winter and look great by next season.

Finally, we swept and tidied the greenhouse to conclude our eventful weekend at the Strathroy Cuddy Gardens’ greenhouse.

            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….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another week down here at Cuddy Gardens and the weather has been very plant friendly! Aside from the humidity and high temperatures, the week ended with perfect weekend weather and provided enough moisture throughout the week to keep plants happy. There has been a lot of weeding going on everywhere as we started the week by tackling the perennial border moving to some deadheading in the Rose garden on Tuesday. What a difference in blooms since then!
The summer is flying by and before you know it we will be rushing back to classes trying to keep track of the next big test. With everything feeling so rushed, it is sometimes hard to stop and appreciate what nature has to offer. Although nature provides us with weeds, weeds, and more weeds, I still have no complaints when it comes to being part of this amazing horticulture crew and helping to maintain the garden's pride and beauty. Enjoy the weekend and take in a dose of nature's beauty!

 

July 5, 2013

The first week of July is here! A short week this week as Monday was set aside for Canadians to celebrate "Canada's birthday"! Remembering the fireworks that lit up the night sky on Monday, I was greeted with the bursts of colour back at the Cuddy gardens Tuesday morning.

 
 
 
 



 
 
Previously the crew started storage bins that were completed this week. Here I am adding one of the last boards to call this job complete. Even though we "play in the dirt" we like to keep things neat and organized!

With warmer weather this week new bugs for us to "enjoy" have been making their presence known. I learned that they are not much of a flyer but more of a falling with uncontrolled style insect that can become a nuisance when it comes to roses.














The short week has come to a close with the touch ups on the ground for a tour with the Thorndale Horticulture Society Saturday. The grounds are sure to not disappoint with the various plants that are in bloom and the little plants some may overlook.