15th Mar 2016

Department: Glass

Greg when watering the Glasshouse was feeding as well via the Dosatron with a high nitrogen 4:1:2 feed. He gave me a tour of his Service house. The house is kept at a day temperature of 18°C and night temperature of no less than 16°C. Vents are opened when it gets to 20°C. When light levels are at 350 watts there is 50% shading, if it is at 400 watts then it is 100% shading.

Photo 1: Tropical Service House

They have started putting in bio-control - thrip, aphid and whitefly predators in there, so the only chemical spray he can use is SB invigorator. They usually do two big chemical sprays after the butterfly event, but they are only doing this in Display this year. There are four main bench rows in the Tropical Service house - roughly one is for cuttings and their Peperomia collection, one is for the Begonia collection, one is for stock plants and plants potted on and ready to be planted in Display, the last is a Bromeliad collection. Then there are miscellaneous dotted around - a variety of Amorphophallus, tanks for growing waterlilies including the Victoria lily and other Nymphaea, an Abutilon collection etc.

Photo 2: Lily tank

Photo 3: The warty tuber of an Amorphophallus starting to come out of dormancy, needs to be potted up soon.

There's never really a quiet period in glass, when it is 'quiet' that is the time when they clean the glass and the algae from the floor. At this time of year when the plants start growing again they are mainly busy with potting. They have been dividing Achimenes - though these are usually done in Nov/ Dec, but they have been busy. The Begonia collection is about to be all propped, it is two years since they were last done and some of them are starting to look tired.

Greg prefers to crop water if can, he usually does his main watering on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The latter he does a big watering of everything so that plants do not need so much watering over the weekend. He does this so that plants can generally dry a bit in between, the other days he does a bit of spot watering if required. Peter on the hand who shares the watering in this house prefers to spot water. Things like the Peperomia and Begonia like to be very dry and then well watered, their roots don't like to sit too wet but their leaves like humidity and to be misted. For crop watering to be effective preferably the plants are all in the same pot size. The Calathea like high humidity too but he finds it hard to keep them in pots and is still trying to get a hand on how best to maintain them this way, when they are planted in display they do fine. The Bromeliads can go up to 3 weeks without watering even in summer. Though Greg in the summer does them once per week. Dracaena and Aglaonema are kept quite dry. The epicacti are watered once per week. The Amorphophallus when active likes to be moist - some can produce leaves that can last up to a year before dying back. He feeds twice per week. In the Service house he usually likes them to give a 4:1:2 feed for the foliage and when they are in Display he uses a feed that concentrates on flowering.

Photo 4: Note for Tropical Service House