Dividing more ferns, all staff meeting and orchids

Weather: Really windy, high of 38.

First off today it was back out into the fern passage dividing the biggest specimens. We're onto the third long bed out of four, so getting there! Today the four of us (Mark, David, Andrew and I) were ambitious and set the objective of getting the last big specimens in the third bed done by 10.30 when we had an all staff 'town hall' meeting. It was a bit of a rush but we got it done and tidied up on time. We repotted another huge Dicksonia antartica, two large Asplenium australasicum and a number of smaller ferns, Colysis sp etc.
photos finally!

After finished tidying up the fern passage we had a town hall meeting. It mostly focused on acknowledging the 'victories' of the past quarter; Christmas, snow ops, online course registration etc. Paul Redman (director) also gave an update on Longwoods finances and an update on the 40 year master plant being developed by the landscape architecture firm West 8. Pretty cool stuff really. Its all conceptual at the moment but its interesting to see an institution completely re-envision layout, buildings etc. It will be pretty neat to come back to Longwood in 20 or 30 years and see how its evolved.

And after lunch I was with Marie and the Orchids again. Started by repotting a few Laeliocattleya hybrids.

 Then pricked out some Disa uniflora hybrid seedlings. Disa uniflora were bought back by a longwood gardens expedition to South Africa and have since been hybridised at Longwood. The seedlings are sown in wet sphagnum moss. I pricked out approximately the 40 strongest and potted them into fresh sphagnum with a bit more space to grow, about 15 to a pot. They're tiny so it was fiddly work, I used the wire of two paper clips to help prick them out. worked well enough. the pots were then placed in a pan full of water.