I started to blog to give me a way to journal my gardening year. It was more to help me remember what I did from year to year. What worked and what didn't. It also became my creative outlet for a less than satisfying job when it came to my passion for growing and enjoying plants. I don't have that job anymore, so the blog is not for creative reasons. It has taken a different turn in that I now include a lot of my professional life in my pages.
Being a manager at a facility that runs both a greenhouse and nursery operation has not been without its challenges. Add in the municipal factor and you add a layer of politics to the mix. I walked into a job just about a year ago to perform a miracle of sorts. The plants we have been working with and getting into the greenhouse this year already were still in their seedling stage at the beginning of May last year. There were (and still are) a large group of city employees that wanted to see the operation continue to be successful and be a part of our forestry operations. They worked extra hard to help get the job done and successfully get most of the work accomplished. Some things had to be left behind when time ran out on digging trees or when crop failure and unavailability stood in our path. Overall, we did get the crop into the greenhouse and get a product out to the customer. The trees we didn't get out last spring are hopefully all going to get where they need to go.
You inherit things when you take over where others left off. Over stock on most everything was my inheritance. We are still using some soiless mix in some of our pots that was purchased in August of 2013. We finally got in some new mix with a viable wetting agent for our bedding plant crops this spring. We have some items that don't suit our needs that I can't give away. Other things have found a new purpose. Some have been exchanged with other agencies for things we do need. We can now get all the equipment and implements into covered spaces each day. We can also go into our storage areas and access what we need without having to move several items to get to it. We have also found things that were thought to be lost to the ages, but have been found in our explorations.
The other part of the job is finding new ways to do things for the sake of making the job easier. Since I was on the working end of this operation for 20 years before, I knew what challenges were face on a daily basis. We changed layouts, altered irrigation, and looked at the job from a different angle to find how we could get the work done with the least amount of effort. All phases of plant care to plant shipping were considered in my layout of greenhouse crops. Grouping things which require hand watering in areas where we have no over head irrigation (yet) down to how we load a truck so that our plants follow a path of sorts. Temperature considerations were huge. Often times we haven't dialed back our greenhouses in spring because we had cold sensitive crops in the same house as those that can take it cool. Hardening off items for our customers is high on my priority list. Most of all, I wanted to make it about making it easier for the person that spends their weekends here alone caring for 28.000 square feet of greenhouse space. Work smarter, not harder is the motto. We are also going to try to grow more items in their shipping trays to avoid the slow downs faced by having to flat everything up in order to get it on the truck. Whether all this proves to be a smart move is yet to be seen. Stay tuned.
One thing that we were able to get this spring was new ventilation in an old house. It had always been a source of frustration that the house was never able to cool off once the sun came out. It wasn't designed right and a redesign with new heating made the problem worse. Hopefully we will have corrected the problem with better placement of vents and fans. Again, stay tuned.
The rain is falling early this morning and is going to keep it up all day. This will hamper our operations a bit, but we will concentrate on some greenhouse work today. Little by little we will get through the season and come to the end like we do every year. I am privileged to be able to do this with such a good group of hard workers. You don't know city workers like I know city workers. They are cut out for the task.
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