Cleaning sooty mold from a Podocarpus plant, and splitting a Hippeastrum

When I arrived, Curator J... and Coordinator A... were both in meetings. J was meeting online, seated in the workroom with his computer open. As I learned later, Coordinator A was meeting in person with the building consultant who originally designed the greenhouse several years ago. He was discussing the design features he had built into the greenhouse, some which might not be fully in use. Since they were both occupied with their meetings, I had to find something to do with my time. I selected a plant sticky with "honeydew" from scale insect infestation and began to clean the honeydew and sooty mold off from plant leaves and stems. I selected the plant in room 1C because "A" has planned to focus on this room while the weather is still mild, and it is warm enough to work in the room comfortably. I chose the plant Podocarpus matudae (I'm fairly sure I cleaned this very plant a few weeks ago...):

Podocarpus matudae

Coordinator A finished his meeting with the greenhouse designer, then found me to assign my next task: to clean and repot 4 of the small plants in room 3C. They are either overgrown, or infested with mealybugs, or both conditions for one of the plants. The plants were: Zephyranthes minuta, Scilla peruviana, Cyrtanthus sanguineus, and Hippeastrum species:

Hippeastrum species

Zephyranthes minuta, Scilla peruviana, Cyrtanthus sanguineus

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Another routine spectacular day in the greenhouse

It has been a sincere pleasure for me to volunteer a few hours a week at the University of Minnesota Botanical Conservatory. After many visits over the last few years, exactly none of those days have felt ordinary or repetitive. If there is a routine , it is that the botanic diversity of the collection - with over 3000 species - is displayed in a spectacular way each day. The Conservatory is located on the St. Paul campus, and is free of charge and open to the public during typical weekday hours. For instance, today most of my allotted time was spent in just one of eight rooms, the room that houses the tropical collection. The chores included pruning, re-potting, spraying, sweeping, etc. As I moved through the room, in every direction, there seemed to be a stunning plant pleading to be admired. After the chores were complete, I had the opportunity to go back and photograph some of the beauties that surrounded me while working. Dendrobium tangerinum , Papua New Guinea Dendr...

I celebrate learning this about cycad plants

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Remembering my former city garden

This post is more of a journal entry than a public blog post. It is interesting to me, but won't be too interesting to almost any other reader - except perhaps my partner who was there as a co-conspirator. I want to document my thoughts about the past, my backyard garden, and what we put in it. The size of our city lot was not large. At 100 x 50 ft, there was just enough room for the house, a small garage, and back yard. The driveway was shared with our neighbor. The style of the house was standard American Foursquare, built in 1903. We bought the place in the early 1990's and slowly, over the next 25 years, renovated almost every inch the house and garden. A dry stone wall was built, with terrace bed to break up the height of the wall Caladiums and dragon-wing begonias line the steps of the front porch Well-earned sit-down on the front porch after a busy day Front wall terrace with blue phlox, hostas, astilbe, snap dragons, and coral bells. Front wall terrace, brunnera "J...

City Gardener

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