What We Did in April
Hi folks! BPG has as usual been hard at it each Wednesday morning over April. Here’s a little retrospective of what we got up to:
Our propagation is pretty much done with for the planting year, meaning that our weekly work has switched to maintenance and other projects. One of the main projects for the last month is our reticulation upgrade. For a few years now, BPG has been running on a typical residential reticulation controller. It’s hard to program, it doesn’t quite have enough zones for the number of propagation benches we have, and it isn’t rugged like we need. Nevertheless, BPG has got lucky, and it’s served us well while we get ourselves together to replace it.
Well, that time has finally come. Throughout the last few weeks we did some trenching, digging the trenches for the new electrical cable to be run from the new controller to the zone solenoids (which turn the water on and off for each bench). It was a lot of work, with at times digging in hard clays, with hand tools. But that hard work has paid off. This week the plan is to run the cable and hook up the terminals, meaning that our reticulation system is thiiiis 👌🏼 close to operational. Here is what this new system will give us:
Enough zones for one-zone-per-bench, including expansion to more benches,
Per-zone control of watering amount, frequency, etc., allowing better control for different species and container sizes,
Easier programming of the watering program, making adjustments easier,
Better timekeeping (the old system tended to get out of sync quite quickly), and
A generally all-round more reliable system.
and some other things that are slipping my mind currently.
Other than the reticulation upgrade, further things we have been doing:
A seedling inventory, to figure out exactly how many plants we have ready (and not ready) to go in the ground. A surprisingly complex task.
Preparing for the Bassendean Twilight market on the 25th of April. That was unfortunately cancelled, but we hope to be there for the one in May. Preparation involved picking plants to sell, and organizing prizes for a fundraising raffle.
General maintenance on the plant benches, including de-mossing pots, discarding failed plants, and sorting+organising.
Doing some earthworks for our new deck (more news about that to come soon).
And many other small tasks like preparing new cleaning rags, purchasing new inventory, sorting our supplies, and trimming back shrubs and weeds growing into the compound. There is always something to do.
BPG runs nursery activity days every Wednesday morning, which is where all this work happens. If you want to be kept up to date with what we’re up to, click this link: https://civi.bpginc.info/civicrm/mailing/subscribe where you can subscribe to one or all of our mailing lists. And as always, you can always contact us with questions at contact@bpginc.info.
More soon!