Sowing Peach Pits

At the beginning of the school year Ms. Whetzel, our Barbering Instructor, very generously gave the students several bags of cleaned peach pits in the hopes that we could germinate them and grow our own peach trees to sell and/or plant.

Now, before you just go about tossing a peach pit in a pot and hoping for the best, it must be "cold stratified", exposed to a period of chiling (to simulate winter) before germination can occur. Our peach pits began their stratification way back on August 27, one of our first days of school. 90 days later, they are ready to sow.

The above video walks through the steps of sowing a prepared peach pit, one that has been fully stratified.

Our students are going to prepare two groups for germination. One group will stay inside ontop of a heat mat and under a grow light, the other group will go out into the greenhouse.

We'll keep you posted on progress!

STUDENTS: Which group do you think will germinate the fastest? Why?

Extreme Teamwork

Throughout the school year here at CATEC our focus is two-fold. First, we strive to give our students specific technical skills that they may apply in the workplace. Second we work hard to instill in them the "soft skills" also necessary for the workplace, here at CATEC we call them WORKPLACE SKILLS. Amongst those "soft skills" teamwork ranks very high, and it is something that the Horticulture/Landscaping students get lessons in almost everyday.
Today we watched a video clip from the History Channels Ax Men, (episode 1 Man v. Mountain), that I felt demonstrated teamwork in an extreme situation, but also showed teamwork skills that could be applied to everyday situations.
Students - If you need a refresher, please click on the link above to review the video from yesterday, then answer the following questions -

1. Specifically, what are three things in the video that show examples of good teamwork?
2. How could you apply those skills demonstrated in the video in the classroom?

HGTV

Hello All!

This past week our class began watching a show on HGTV, Home and Garden Television, called "Groundbreakers". The HGTV website streams full episodes of many of their shows, several of which are very pertinent to our class. This week we watched two episodes of "Groundbreakers". One episode ("Laboring Towards a New Landscape") involved what could be considered a large scale residential project, the other ("Windowwall") a smaller scale residential project. However both incorporated retaining walls, water features, sod removal, and plant installation.

I began showing these episodes to the students as a form of inspiration, and to open dialog about the landscaping industry.

STUDENTS: Please tell me at least three things that you thought were really cool from these episodes. Also tell me if anything was surprising to you, did you see anything that was unexpected for the role of the Landscape Designer? What projects featured in these episodes do you want to learn more about?