Been a bit slack on this front, so here goes:
Thursday 8th July:
Today I was posted up to the main site to help another Emma, who is head of temporary displays (anything that isn't permanent, funnily enough, both plant and non-plant), to clear her workshop. We were joined by Gill and Tiana - Gill formerly worked on the veg gardens (she gave us a talk back in November) and Tiana is a volunteer, originally from California. We spent the morning clearing out the workshop and getting everything shipshape (sorting plastic potatoes from plastic lemons and halloween props from christmas ones) and then after lunch we went for a wander up to an area of the outdoor biome that has been planted up with species from Chile and then on to the meadow areas to pick wildflowers for the Big Lunch press launch on Friday. Emma is clearly a forager and has an encyclopedic knowledge of wildflowers and other plants, fungi and all sorts. It was a fascinating and very fun afternoon - we stood at the top of the hill looking out to the sea and all thought we were pretty blooming lucky... Had a quick chat at lunch with Kevin - he was asking if I would be WWOOFing but I don't have time - maybe next year...
Friday 9th July
I got started weeding part of Steve's polytunnel this morning - a long and laborious task as it hasn't been done for ages, then Roger came over and asked if I would clear the Venlo greenhouse of some of the old plants, so I spent the rest of the morning and the afternoon organising pots and plants and composting the majority, though I did keep some (ok, about 20 plants) basil back to use for pesto etc. It all looked much better once I'd finished, though I felt a little guilty chucking all the plants on the compost - better than in the bin, I suppose. The horseflies were really going for me today - they seem to be concentrated around the compost heap, which was pretty unpleasant...
Monday 12 July
Planting goji berries - all 70 of 'em
Tuesday 13 July
Main site - cut flower beds with Emma, Gill and Tiana, Paolo Nutini's tourbus
Weds 14 July
Potting up plants from winter hanging baskets - hellebores, ivy, cyclamen, carex
Thurs 15 July
Hort Day at Golant Youth Hostel. Presentations on sustainable use of water, fertiliser, compost and suchlike; walk around field, cake aplenty; Kev says to start with his team on Monday as no sign of Paddy who's organising my rota!
Fri 16 July
Deliveries to main site with Steve - replacement plants for street, watering in afternoon - last day! Sayonara horseflies
Mon 19 July - Fri 23 July
Working with outdoor crops team. Weeding and harvesting in global gardens, weeding and harvesting in Cornish Crops, weeding and planting in Crops That Feed The World - sloping potatoes :) Trimming back Tagetes, feeding tomatoes with viscous black liquid, stocktaking herb garden under canopy, cutting down Allium giganteum, harvesting blackcurrants in the rain, pulling out Fiddlehead, biggest beetroot competition with Corin, plaiting shallots, planting up white border with Rosie (snapdragons and violas), watering in nemaslug, planting out chillis and aubergines under canopy with Kevin, shallot plaiting competition.
Mon 26 July - Fri 30 July
Mon-Wed in med biome with Rose and Shirley, feeding citrus trees, weeding beds, staking tomatoes, watering upstairs (covering cork pigs) and also orchard area (stinging nettles ouch). Tuesday afternoon with Emma and Jill, painting labels for display and popping out to play with Kevin's dogs, Thursday morning with Darren's team, cutting down Gunnera round the back of the Core and then weeding in spiral garden, thursday afternoon with Emma, Jill and Tiana, weeding cut flower garden and planting out various things. Friday all day with Darren's team, working in 'Japan' to clear Coltsfoot and other weeds, then a walk round the various areas with Jamie and Julie, off to Kevin's smallholding in the evening for a nosey.
Mon 2 Aug - Fri 6 Aug
Heligan! Mon-Wed with Carly in Flower Garden, weeding perennial beds and deadheading cosmos, cutting flowers for drying (Statice, Nigella, Gypsophila), potting up Erigeron. Thurs in productive garden with Carol, planting out rows of cabbages (Savoy 'Winter King' and 'Ormskirk', before collaring to ward off cabbage root fly. Knees knackered. Friday day off to finish freelancing.
Mon 9 Aug - Fri 13 Aug
Mon-Tue with Nicola in productive garden, thinning grapes in vinery while rain pelted down (see Heligan blog post http://www.lostgardensofheligan.blogspot.com/), digging up Antirrhinums to be replaced with Sweet Williams and Wallflowers, hoeing between rows of chard and beet seedlings (and the revelation that visitors have taken photos of Ren's arse). Collaring more cabbages. Weds with Carly in flower garden, collecting more flowers for drying and potting up rare heritage violas (accidentally squishing a wasp, thinking it was a horsefly). Back with Nicola on Thurs and Fri to take down old peas and the brash and pea sticks that supported them before Clive takes down the wires. Odd bits of weeding for Carly. Carly gave me a beautiful posy on my last day. Looking forward to going back in November!
Wednesday 14 July 2010
Wednesday 7 July 2010
Pot on
Tuesday 6 July
This morning was more bamboo trimming and chatting with Steve. He had to head off early so I was tasked with doing the watering again. It's quite enjoyable, even though it takes ages, because a lot of the plants I'm watering are herbs and so the air is perfumed while you're watering - even nicer when the sun's out! Apparently I'm up at the main site on Thursday, helping out a lass called Emma (who showed us round the temperate biome back in January), so am to report up there for 10am.
Wednesday 7 July
With the bamboo trimming complete, Maureen asked me to sow various seeds that should have been done a few days ago. Michael showed me how to fill sweet pea trainers with compost (they are bottomless) but it took me more than a few goes to get the compost to stay put rather than dropping out of the bottom. Fresh, moist compost made it much easier, and into these I sowed chickpea seeds (far too many, as it turned out), and then went on to sow Lens (lentils), three types of squash, some Indigo and some beans. Once I finished I went to help Michael, and was tasked with potting on Salvia cuttings (got quite speedy at that) and then Steve brought over some Angelica plugs that needed potting on. I wasn't sure whether I had to remove the plant from the plug so I had a look at some other pots in the greenhouse and they all seemed to still be in the plug, so I left them as they were and potted them up. A huge long moth flew out of one of the pots (possibly an Orange Footman?), giving me a bit of a fright...
After lunch Michael asked me to pot up some Impatiens (which are apparently destined for the Core building, for the photosynthesis machine display!). First we cut large squares of fleece, then filled the pots halfway with hydroponic clay beads before popping the plants out of their pots, wrapping the fleece round their roots and then filling around the root ball with more beads and then giving them a good watering.
Afterwards I went up to the tropical greenhouse with Maureen and Michael to look at the air pots they were trialling. Maureen and Tim are growing balsa seedlings in normal 9cm pots and in these pots that allow the roots to grow down (rather than spiralling) and then be air-pruned (dehydrated), which then prompts the plant to send out secondary and tertiary roots, creating a better root ball. The air pot plants were smaller, but had better root formation.
Before heading home Maureen asked me to sort out the basil plants in the Venlo greenhouse so that volunteers can take them home tomorrow (apparently I am welcome to take some too :), so I battled with some indignant bees and moved everything around. Fingers crossed I'll be able to take a few of them home - there was sweet basil, purple basil, lemon basil and a curious curly-leaved one.
This morning was more bamboo trimming and chatting with Steve. He had to head off early so I was tasked with doing the watering again. It's quite enjoyable, even though it takes ages, because a lot of the plants I'm watering are herbs and so the air is perfumed while you're watering - even nicer when the sun's out! Apparently I'm up at the main site on Thursday, helping out a lass called Emma (who showed us round the temperate biome back in January), so am to report up there for 10am.
Wednesday 7 July
With the bamboo trimming complete, Maureen asked me to sow various seeds that should have been done a few days ago. Michael showed me how to fill sweet pea trainers with compost (they are bottomless) but it took me more than a few goes to get the compost to stay put rather than dropping out of the bottom. Fresh, moist compost made it much easier, and into these I sowed chickpea seeds (far too many, as it turned out), and then went on to sow Lens (lentils), three types of squash, some Indigo and some beans. Once I finished I went to help Michael, and was tasked with potting on Salvia cuttings (got quite speedy at that) and then Steve brought over some Angelica plugs that needed potting on. I wasn't sure whether I had to remove the plant from the plug so I had a look at some other pots in the greenhouse and they all seemed to still be in the plug, so I left them as they were and potted them up. A huge long moth flew out of one of the pots (possibly an Orange Footman?), giving me a bit of a fright...
After lunch Michael asked me to pot up some Impatiens (which are apparently destined for the Core building, for the photosynthesis machine display!). First we cut large squares of fleece, then filled the pots halfway with hydroponic clay beads before popping the plants out of their pots, wrapping the fleece round their roots and then filling around the root ball with more beads and then giving them a good watering.
Afterwards I went up to the tropical greenhouse with Maureen and Michael to look at the air pots they were trialling. Maureen and Tim are growing balsa seedlings in normal 9cm pots and in these pots that allow the roots to grow down (rather than spiralling) and then be air-pruned (dehydrated), which then prompts the plant to send out secondary and tertiary roots, creating a better root ball. The air pot plants were smaller, but had better root formation.
Before heading home Maureen asked me to sort out the basil plants in the Venlo greenhouse so that volunteers can take them home tomorrow (apparently I am welcome to take some too :), so I battled with some indignant bees and moved everything around. Fingers crossed I'll be able to take a few of them home - there was sweet basil, purple basil, lemon basil and a curious curly-leaved one.
Monday 5 July 2010
Placement 2 begins: Eden nurseries
Friday 2 July 2010
After a bit of worry over not being able to contact Mark, who was helping me organise my placement, we finally spoke and he told me I would be starting at the Eden nurseries at Watering Lane rather than on the main site today, and so yesterday I met him at Eden and we drove over to meet Roger and the crew for a quick tour and a cuppa. Roger said to start at 8am today, and on arrival I was assigned to Tim, who runs the greenhouse that supplies plants to the humid tropical biome. He got me repotting various plants, including peace lilies and amorphophallus tubers, and then in the afternoon I trimmed the old pitchers from the various pitcher plants - some of which contained some rather grisly deceased insects. On clearing out some dead plants I lifted a pot and several red cockroaches scuttled out and back under cover - lovely.
Tim has grown some lotus (nelumbo) from seed and the first flower opened today - after only two years compared to the normal three, so he was really pleased. The flower regulates the temperature inside it, meaning it is slightly warmer when you stick your nose in. The flowers also close when the temperature cools or the sun goes in, although it didn't ever feel too cool in the greenhouse, which is incredibly humid. A good start to my placement; I really enjoyed myself today.
Monday 5 July
On arrival I was assigned to Steve, who got me pruning the dead bits off bamboos (phyllostachys) before he repotted them (which involved jumping on the pots to loosen them). After break I was assigned to watering his greenhouses and polytunnels, plus some lavenders that stay outside. He has to do this most days, especially in hot weather, as the plants can be wilting by the time he's finished if it's really hot and sunny. Some of the greenhouses have drip feed irrigation but otherwise it's all done manually with a long hose and a 'lance'. It took me the rest of the day to finish it, stopping almost exactly at home time, but it's actually quite an enjoyable job and I can see why Steve likes listening to his mp3 player as he works!
There are actually only four permanent full-time staff members - Roger, Tim, Steve and Maureen; the rest are part-time, volunteers or part of the Roots staff, a salad bag charity that employs disabled people, which is run out of one of the glasshouses. They're a cheery bunch, everyone having a good chat in the mess room at lunchtime.
After a bit of worry over not being able to contact Mark, who was helping me organise my placement, we finally spoke and he told me I would be starting at the Eden nurseries at Watering Lane rather than on the main site today, and so yesterday I met him at Eden and we drove over to meet Roger and the crew for a quick tour and a cuppa. Roger said to start at 8am today, and on arrival I was assigned to Tim, who runs the greenhouse that supplies plants to the humid tropical biome. He got me repotting various plants, including peace lilies and amorphophallus tubers, and then in the afternoon I trimmed the old pitchers from the various pitcher plants - some of which contained some rather grisly deceased insects. On clearing out some dead plants I lifted a pot and several red cockroaches scuttled out and back under cover - lovely.
Tim has grown some lotus (nelumbo) from seed and the first flower opened today - after only two years compared to the normal three, so he was really pleased. The flower regulates the temperature inside it, meaning it is slightly warmer when you stick your nose in. The flowers also close when the temperature cools or the sun goes in, although it didn't ever feel too cool in the greenhouse, which is incredibly humid. A good start to my placement; I really enjoyed myself today.
Monday 5 July
On arrival I was assigned to Steve, who got me pruning the dead bits off bamboos (phyllostachys) before he repotted them (which involved jumping on the pots to loosen them). After break I was assigned to watering his greenhouses and polytunnels, plus some lavenders that stay outside. He has to do this most days, especially in hot weather, as the plants can be wilting by the time he's finished if it's really hot and sunny. Some of the greenhouses have drip feed irrigation but otherwise it's all done manually with a long hose and a 'lance'. It took me the rest of the day to finish it, stopping almost exactly at home time, but it's actually quite an enjoyable job and I can see why Steve likes listening to his mp3 player as he works!
There are actually only four permanent full-time staff members - Roger, Tim, Steve and Maureen; the rest are part-time, volunteers or part of the Roots staff, a salad bag charity that employs disabled people, which is run out of one of the glasshouses. They're a cheery bunch, everyone having a good chat in the mess room at lunchtime.
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