Kate Carithers
Internship position: Horticulture Intern
2/22/18
I started my internship out by trying to orient myself and learning the basics of what needed to be done on a somewhat regular basis, including planting, pruning, transplanting, and learning where everything went, as well as learning the names of my coworkers and helping them with their respective daily tasks. It was here that I was at a bit of a loss on how to go about approaching this internship, considering how task oriented it is (which is not a bad thing! Just a little difficult to write essays on learning objectives when I’m not necessarily a horticulture major.) Taking into account that I’m studying anthropology and also taking advantage of the fact that Como Park is a heavily volunteer-dependent operation, I tried to reach out to what the tasks gave me access to-- the people around me and the stories they had to tell.
As it turns out, the volunteers have a lot to share about what the park and volunteering experience does for them! Many of the greenhouse volunteers are older community members with gardens of their own, but no access to work on them during the winter. Others take advantage of the greenhouse’s warmth and the springtime feeling it gives in the middle of winter- being in this environment helps them to stay physically and mentally healthy. When taking this into consideration, it made me realize how important the site is to those volunteers, who are in turn important to the site itself.
3/8/18
One of the things I’ve come to realize as I look around the different rooms and plant types in the conservatory is the impact the space has on perception of the specimens and the physical differences between what’s able to be displayed and how the plant exists in nature. This becomes apparent in how often taller trees such as palms are trimmed down to prevent them from running into walls, or because they would otherwise reach past the ceiling.
On a similar vein is when it comes to fruit trees, and the differences between seeing something in a conservatory versus in nature versus in a commercialized setting. One of the fruit trees grown in the conservatory on a regular basis are papayas, which have to be trimmed down and taken out when they’re through with producing fruit. A coworker wondered how papayas are grown commercially, and rather how they’re cared for in that setting when they’re such a woody plant. I tried to research this, and while I didn’t quite get exact answers with the nuance she was looking for, it looks like papayas are grown as intercrops with staggered growing seasons, and are also kept for a few years before being replaced, saving the work that the conservatory has to put in much more frequently to the end of the tree’s full growing period.
4/12/18
I got to try my hand at the greenhouse cleaning process, since we wanted to get it presentable for a volunteer party event coming up the following week. Over time, the greenhouse gets littered with plant matter and a lot of soil, and due to the aisle structure of the room and the cement flooring, it’s very difficult to clean up manually, so what we did was hose down the floors and aim the water toward the grates in the middle of the room. As someone who’s done a lot of research on nutrient runoff, I felt rather conflicted doing this, especially when it came to larger debris building up around the grates and being told to just force it all into the grate with the water. What happened to the debris, and more importantly, was this not a really heavy contribution to nutrient pollution? Also with water being hosed out on high volume for about an hour and a half, was this not kind of a waste of water? Knowing Como Park and their active efforts to be environmentally sustainable, I figured there was probably an explanation.
With these questions in mind, I did some research on Como Park’s water waste management, and found out that, as far as the latter concern went, at least part of the water used by the park is collected rainwater or recycled from usage in the park itself. Other ways that the park deals with water waste is to send it to sanitation systems instead of through the stormwater drains. I’m not sure exactly how much this helps to reduce pollution and water use, but it’s good to know that there are efforts in place. As far as the concern over debris, it turns out the larger pieces are caught by the drains themselves, which are fitted with buckets at the bottom to filter the worst of it (and results in a lot of clogging, which requires regular manual fixing).
5/3/18
I had the wonderful opportunity of getting to see an overview of the conservatory’s automated environment control, called (by the greenhouse staff) Priva, which basically automatically adjusts things like temperature, humidity, and lighting in the greenhouse to ensure optimal growing conditions despite whatever the weather may be like outside. As of right now, only the highest level supervisors are able to use it (only due to the fact that the manual that they do have is incredibly old and difficult to learn- which they’re looking into updating so that more people can use it), so I wasn’t able to learn much about how it works in the conservatory, but due to the level of efficiency it provides it saves the greenhouse a lot of time, cost, and energy than they would expend should the controls be manual. While it’s fantastic that the conservatory has invested in a more energy efficient way to run their operation, it made me realize just how much energy goes into greenhouses and agriculture. Somehow, I always had the impression that greenhouses were inherently energy efficient, but seeing how many factors go into it and how easily these factors can be affected by the outdoors, I realize that the energy that does go into greenhouses is the cost we as a society pay for efficient agriculture.