Greenhouse update - March 15

The HortClub shelf was cleaned and all the tools can be found there. New plastic wrap is available as requested. If you borrow tools, please put them back where they're located.



From left to right: tomato, cucumber, herb, and pepper notebooks. The herb group is doing an excellent job in recording their duties, as well as notes for future work. Nothing have been recorded in the tomato notebook, so it seems like the tomato group has some communication difficulties.


Valerie Adrian is doing a great job here. Your pepper is doing great and some of the orange and yellow peppers are ready to be harvested. Pruning should STOP at this point, but shaking the plants for pollination is still necessary.




The new cucumber line is doing great; I have seen some cucumber fruits on these young plants. Pruning the leaves is not recommended at this stage since theoretically each leaf is the food source for the fruit. However, pruning side foliage and side vines are necessary. There are a few cucumbers on the old line that are ready to be harvested, you can find the plastic wrap on the shelf, and make sure you wrap them appropriately, or they will go soft if the skin gets exposed to cold air in the cooler.

The new lettuce set has been transplanted. This time we have 2 varieties (red leaf and butter crunch). I did water them on Sunday morning, so they won't need any water until Wednesday. Do not put on the spaghetti tube, since they don't need a lot of water at this stage. Please water them with the red water container in the greenhouse.

Lots of chamomile are ready to be harvested; please harvest these flowers and I will put them in the dry room in Phytotron.

No picture for the tomato group since I've seen a lot of broken main stems. Please keep in mind that it takes a lot of time for a new main shoot to emerge, and yield will be put back for weeks. If you guys regularly prune the side shoots properly and do not let them grow wildly, you could have saved a lot of plants and fruits. In addition, you also need to harvest the ripen tomatoes, and place them in the blue box in cooler #111.2. Once again, this is what you should do this week:

• Pruning off all the side shoots (only 30mins maximum, but this is really important).
• Removing some of the fruits to maintain ~4-5 fruits per cluster.
• Putting on the clips.

New member: We have a new member, her name is Amy Cheng and she would like to help out in the greenhouse, preferably with tomatoes and herbs. If either groups are looking for new members, please contact Amy.


Member appreciation: Everyone have been working hard and have contributed a lot to our greenhouse project. Therefore to the members who have been helping out from the beginning until now, there will be a small gift. Some members already got their gift last Thursday during the joint meeting and I hope you like it. I apologize to those who didn't get a gift, since I didn't receive your email confirming you would come. However, you will get a different gift.

You can collect your gifts during the general meeting this Wednesday, location and time TBA :( .

Here is the list of members:

• Herbs group: Danielle, May, Christina, Thea, Amelie
• Pepper group: Valerie
• Tomato group: Colin, Rachel, Peter
• Cucumber: Nathelie, Mercedes, Kaleigh

There are 3 more names: Katie, Janel, and Mandy. I will contact your group leader to get more information.

Hope to see everyone this Wednesday at the general meeting.

Peter Le