Skip to main content

Completing the bromeliad project

I often feel guilty after my trips to the CBS (College of Biological Sciences) Conservatory at the University of Minnesota. They are supposed to be earnest volunteering events. But really, it feels like recess or playtime. The best part is that there is almost no stress: there are world class experts to consult if I have a questions, and the best part is I have no deadlines, peer reviews, compliance courses, diagnosis or billing codes to muddy the experience. I feel a bit sheepish for getting so much joy with almost none of the responsibility other than arriving on-time at 10:00 a.m. - a very civilized hour of the morning.

Today I learned so much. My task today was hanging bromeliad plants. This is a project I started last week but couldn't complete due to lack of time and materials. On the way, I passed these two interesting orchid plants. They were just sitting at my elbow as I worked to hang the bromeliads.

Cymbidium orchid


A tiny orchid meant to look like a lady bee, to attract a male pollinator

Bromeliads newly hung up on a metal trellises

Last week I hung the larger green variety of the Neoregelia hybrid bromeliads. This week I worked to get the smaller, dark red bromeliads up onto the trellises. Zip ties were used to fix the woody stems to the trellis. I tried to angle the cups of the plants upward to hold water. They get sprayed daily with a weak solution of fertilizer.

Newly freed-up space for other plants in the collection

By hanging the bromeliads on a trellises, rather than allowing them to spread on a horizontal bench surface, at least 50 square feet of precious greenhouse bench space has been freed. This allows space for expansion of other plants in the collection.

Finally, I know it is tacky to mention specific software apps, but I only mention it because it is new to me. The staff of the CBS use the app called Slack to communicate amongst themselves with issues related to the CBS conservatory maintenance. Today I was invited to join the Slack group in order to be up to speed with changes and ongoing issues in the Conservatory. The Slack app is new to me. It is a shared communication board for everyone to read, like an electronic whiteboard. It is an efficient way for the staff to communicate with everyone at the same time, better than having to send messages separately to everyone's text and email inboxes - and having to keep those lists up to date.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

I celebrate learning this about cycad plants

I didn't know that the cardboard palm - Zamia furfuracea - is a cycad. It isn't a palm tree (don't judge me, I'm not a botanist). But it also doesn't look like the other more familiar types of cycads with their fluted upright palm-like fronds. I didn't know it is said to be the second most commonly cultivated cycad, after Cycas revoluta . I didn't know this plant is unrelated to the common ZZ plant - Zamioculcas zamifolia - although they have a similar appearance. Before today I didn't know any of these things, but now I am happy to have learned them. From the parking lot I walked to the U of M Conservatory greenhouse in near-zero F weather. Stepping into the tropical spaces was a joy of its own. But being able to learn new information and experience new procedures was a compounding factor. Joy squared. During my 3-hour volunteer shift, my initial task was to clean the parasite critters (mealybugs and scale) from the stems and leaves of the cycad, Zami...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more