Month: July 2013

I have been potting on plants for a few days now, and, as you usually do, the more you do something the more you see what’s wrong what you are doing, and get a better feeling of what you should do. With air pots, I find there are two main tricky parts in potting on,…

I was mentioning the other day we used synthetic auxins as rooting powders, and today, walking about the greenhouse and the yard, I found more examples of auxins’ influence on plants, which I will share with you. Auxins are one of the families of plant hormones, still rather elusive substances, synthesised in small quantitied by…

The polytunnel needed a tidy up, to make room for more plants, so we moved a few pots around. We use regular plastic and terracotta pots, but more and more we use air-pots, which have some advantages over the usual pots, mainly: they don’t have a flat, circular surface, against which the roots start circling…

I learned how to mix compost today, that we then used for potting on. It was fun! We get our compost components in bulk basic mixes in massive canvas bags. Depending on the use to which the compost will be put to, we will then mix those basic mixes together to give the desired texture:…

So today was my first day in the arboretum nursery. July is the month when the Kew Diploma students in the 1st year finish their classes and go back into the gardens, so with me was also a student, new to the nursery. We were shown around, and then assigned an area to take care…