In the Field

Despite the fact that the warm weather last week started my rhubarb poking up, it's still too cold and snowy to do anything garden-related outdoors. Definitely had my fix of green this week, though. We've had two field trips, Wednesday and today, to indoor green spaces.

Wednesday morning saw my class assembling at the corner of Baseline and Merivale, at what used to be the Nortel complex. After standing empty for a few years, it's now occupied by Agriculture Canada - very convenient, since it's on the edge of the Experimental Farm. Our tropicals/interiorscapes/green roof and wall teacher, Trish, has been involved with the indoor plantings there since several years before Nortel left, so she and her colleague Alex took us around and showed us the place.

They've got some pretty cool spaces. There's a semicircular garden which boasts a huge Peace Lily relative, among other things.

And a warm nook with a climbing fig up the walls, and towering palm trees.

And a water feature with fish in one of the ponds. The rock wall at the back has water trickling down continuously, and behind it is a biofilter - using plants and bacteria to process the fish poop, basically, and keep the water clean.

This afternoon we headed off to Richmond Nursery to learn about seeding and nursery production.

The first thing you notice coming in is the plants in the first greenhouse.

The second thing you notice is the cat - Taz is the official greeter. I don't know if this is a trend in horticulture, but I approve.

We prowled around the front greenhouses waiting for everyone to arrive, admiring plants.

Then we had a tour behind the scenes, learning about the planning and equipment involved in getting all the pots and flats ready that people will be buying in a couple months.

Automatic seeders plant 288 plugs per tray

Mechanical transplanter moves seedlings to larger pots

Dig, Dig, Dig, Mutter.

I've been out transplanting this morning.

Yeah, I thought I was done too. But yesterday my landlord took advantage of the one dry bit of the morning to do the lawn-mowing and the weed-whacking. And whether it was carelessness, botanical ignorance, or simply a guy-getting-carried-away-with-power-tools thing, he cut down a whole bunch of stuff that wasn't weeds. Most of the annuals I planted last week to replace the weeds near the compost pile were toast - I salvaged a few annual rudbeckia, a couple trailing things, and an ivy. Sadly, the coleus and tradescantia had little more than stubs left. The woodruff, which was in flower, got  chopped, but will survive. And I doubt the phlox and the soapwort from the back corner will flower this year, but they're perennials, so they'll live.

I had to find places for all these things, though. Ended up taking out three or four buckets-worth of groundcovers I had been allowing to flourish, and a daylily which was starting to overshadow a bunch of other things. The daylily was a little recalcitrant. Halfway through the digging around it with a shovel to loosen it, it proved too tough for my shovel. Snap went the handle, right above the metal shaft holding the blade on (I knew it was getting weak, but no, I had to push it), and backwards went I, collecting a scrape on my hand where I collided with the concrete behind me. Fortunately, there was an extra shovel available, so I finished the job. It's supposed to rain today, and the ground is still damp from yesterday's rain, so I didn't bother watering things in. I'll do it this evening if the rain doesn't turn up.

And Wednesday when he comes to put out the garbage, I think I'm going to try to have a chat with the landlord. And just to be sure, I may fence the edge to show what's lawn and what's not. I want to make sure I'm not going to lose any vegetables to the weed-whacker.