Repositioning plants

A introduced me to another volunteer (C...) who has expert knowledge about orchids. He was instructing E... on the details of orchid care. C... is the greenhouse's expert orchid grower, with many award ribbons to his credit.

I helped Al... and F... to move the floor-based small trees in C2. Their location was cleared, cleaned, and replaced by a waist-high table onto which we placed small plants. The space created on the adjacent low-table we placed the small trees up off of the concrete, presumably to allow better drainage, air circulation and pest resistance. Edible plants were placed at the south end of the low table. Bananas, gingers, and marantas were placed at the north end of the waist-high table. To make room for the waist-high table, we also had to remove one of the black troughs. The water plants within it (an aquatic fern Salvinia minima. “water spangles”) were relocated to a glass aquarium situated on the waist-high table.

I scrubbed the sooty mold off from the leaves of one of the small plants in C2, an understory plant, located near a group of orchids on a low table.

While the crew were having their usual Thursday meeting in the workroom I occupied myself by cleaning under the new waist-high table in C2, pruning dead leaves throughout the room, and picking up fallen leaves from the floor and pots. Later, I swept the path in D2, and pruned dead leaves in D2-4.

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Thrip control: peppermint and clove

Here's a question: how many natural plant scents do you find repellent? The one that comes to the top of my mind is the scent of the newly blossomed corpse flower, Amorphophallus titanum . It smells very much like the name implies. If I could produce a scratch-and-sniff blog post, I would be tempted. The odor is horrible to humans, but sweet to some flying insects which are also attracted to rotting flesh. But perhaps you cannot tolerate the scent of clove, or eucalyptus? Insect pests are like us in this respect. Pests in the garden and greenhouse Insects, arachnids, fungi, and viruses. Their numbers are legion. The battle is constant. The most effective weapon is vigilance. In addition to vigilance, there are biological controls made from natural compounds which are generally non-toxic to humans. Included in this category are essential oils. For example cinnamon, rosemary, sage, neem, clove, peppermint and many others. These oils are repellent, and even toxic, to many of the pests...

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Dorset Coast, UK, 2024

I've had the privilege of visiting the United Kingdom a few times, but I had never visited the English Channel or the south coast. On a recent backpacking trip up the Thames River with friends in the county of Oxfordshire, my partner and I took the opportunity to explore a small bit the coastal county of Dorset. Route to the Dorset Coast We had ended our hiking trip up the source of the Thames River in the town of Cirencester, in Gloucestershire. From there, we took a train south to Bristol, then continued south on a train to Dorchester, in Dorset. From there, we caught a double-decker bus to Bridport. In Bridport we hiked with our meager backpacks a short distance down to the connected harbor village of West Bay. Bridport and West Bay, Dorset Since we didn't have a rented car, public transportation was our only option to get around. We chose the town of Bridport and the connected harbor of West Bay as our base for exploring the coastal trails. We chose this location because:...

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