Nursery duties over the weekend

Saturday 10th November
Weather: Grey, rainy
It was nursery duty for me this weekend, which is to man the shop as it is open on Saturdays and to look after the greenhouses. We have to take it in turns to do shifts and I will be doing about three of them this winter.

Splitting heleniums in the nursery shop/ soil shed

So basically it consists of:

Feeding the cat, opening & shutting up shop, ventilating greenhouses by opening windows & airing out coldframes and then closing them up at night. Switching heaters off and on again at the right temperature at the end of the day. Watering/ damping down, light wetting of the leaves on cuttings. Checking the rain guage and the weather for the night and the next day. 

Whilst I was manning the shop I also splitted Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer' into even smaller segments and repotting those and making over a 100 new pants out of a clump that was about 30cm x 15 cm wide.

These were the temperatures that the greenhouses had to be kept to:
8 degrees celsius - Michael's house
3 degrees celsius - Kathleens house - The cool house
12 degrees - Begonia house - The Hot house

Sunday 11th November
Weather: Beautiful day, clear sky, sunny. A chill in the air but very warm in the sun.

There were frost tinges on glass frames but not cold enough to do any damage. More things were opened up today to allow more airflow, apart from the Begonia house as it was still a bit chilly for it.