Continuing to grow...........

Whilst September the first is recognised as the start of Spring, and is generally seen as the start of the traditional growing season, our crops are already moving along well in their controlled environment despite the cooler weather outside. 

The tomato plants were transferred from sitting on top of the plastic of the groslabs, to being placed directly on to the pre wetted rockwool.

This obviously agreed with them as they extended their roots to become firmly attached to the rockwool within 2 days!

At the moment we are ensuring that we get good root development from the plants without allowing them to grow to vegetatively - this is a fine balance between growing too vegetatively and retaining a more generative growth pattern.

The first flower trusses are also now setting, and we will soon be taking side shoots from the existing plants to make additional heads for increased production.

                                                                    Tomato Levanzo

Accredited training via eGlasshouse

Our eGlasshouse online training system has taken a giant leap forward in that we can now offer Nationally accredited courses via an online learning system.

Students will now be able to enrol in a number of subjects that can be utilised to form a complete course, leading to a Certificate 3, Certificate 4, or Diploma in Production Horticulture.

Although the courses are offered in an online format, there is also an additional need to either attend practical training at the Chisholm Glasshouse, or have your skills recognised in a formal workplace. This is to ensure that individual skills are displayed in a work based setting, and the courses are not just theory based.

For a full list of the subjects that we are now offering, please look at the eGlasshouse or Training course link on this page, and we are developing more specific subjects for hydroponic growing.

If you are interested in this style of training or need more detail, please contact Tony Bundock at tony.bundock@chisholm.edu.au

Crop Registration

One of the great advantages of our glasshouse facility is that our students can have a 'hands on' experience in practical tasks that relate to crop growing. 

The area of 'Crop Registration' is a key area in tracking the progress of a crop so that a grower or consultant can make a judgement on the progress of a crop, and how it needs to be 'steered' in terms of making it more generative or vegetative.

Our students have been busy setting up individual crop registration sites so that they can hone their skills in crop registration, and their results will be sent off to our crop consultant in the Netherlands.

The students will also be producing spreadsheets that will used to record the plant growth information on, as well as utilizing the Priva Integro computer to identify light levels from the previous year to make comparisons with.

Certificate 4 Production Horticulture student and trainee - Rebecca Meikle starts her crop registration program

2012-13 crop now planted

This week saw our Tomato and Capsicum crops being established with the aid of our students.

Our Certificate 3 students were involved in planting the Pepper's, while our Certificate 4 students spent their class time placing the Tomato plants on to the slabs.

Certificate 3 students planting Capsicum Davos

These practical activities give our students a great opportunity to be involved in a hands on environment with crop growing, and they will be involved in all aspects of the crop development over the forthcoming months.

 

Tomato Levanzo planted by Certificate 4 students

Setting out for the new crop

All of our Certificate 3 students were busy today setting out the Grodan slabs for the new Capsicum and Tomato crops. 

As you can see, we have been busy getting the glasshouse back to a clean and tidy state, which has seen plenty of 'elbow grease' being empoyed in the process!

All of the internal surfaces have been cleaned and we now have our full hygiene protocol in operation.

Now that the slabs are in place we will commence wetting them up in preperation for planting next week. The plants are due to arrive from Trandos Hydroponics in Western Australia at 2.00am on Monday, so an early start for us!