Teaching in the UVM Greenhouses

Following are some of the courses at UVM that utilize the Greenhouses:

Garden Flowers and Indoor Plants

Plant Propagation

Plant Pathology

Vegetable Crops

Garden Flowers and Indoor Plants, PSS 123

Dr. Leonard P. Perry, Extension Professor

My Ten Main Objectives

•For you to learn scientific and common names by memory of 120 common garden flowers and indoor plants.

•For you to learn the cultural and design basics of garden flowers and indoor plants.

•To expose you to key features and cultivars of 250 common garden flowers and indoor plants representing the diversity of this group, and how to readily retreive this information.

•To give you experience in designing with and combining garden flowers and indoor plants.

•For you to get experience thinking and writing about issues relating to garden and indoor plants.

•To help you learn how to find information related to garden and indoor plants on the internet.

•To give you practice with electronic communication skills.

•To help you develop your oral communication skills.

•To help you develop a list of references on, and sources of, garden and indoor plants.

•To have fun!

Plant Pathology, Botany 117

Robert C. Ullrich, Professor of Botany and Agricultural Biochemistry

I use the greenhouse facility only for instruction in Botany 117, Plant Pathology. The greenhouse is used to grow plant specimens for class for a period of three months in the fall semester of alternate years. In some cases diseased specimens are developed in the greenhouse and then brought to the student laboratory, in other cases healthy plants are produced in the greenhouse and these are brought to the laboratory for students to inoculate. Once inoculated some of the plants are returned to the greenhouse for incubation while we await the formation of symptoms of disease.

Vegetable Crops, PSS 124

This course covers many aspects of the production of vegetable crops, including growing and site considerations, marketing, sales, and storage. The laboratory section consists of both field trips to local vegetable growers for on-farm demonstrations, and practical experiments on plants conducted in compartment 10 of the UVM greenhouse. Here are a few of the various greenhouse projects included in this course:

Hydroponics technology demonstration/Vegetable deficiency symptoms-- these two are combined nicely into one experiment. Brocolli, lettuce, eggplant, pepper, and tomato plants were grown hydroponically. Hydroponics is the science of growing plants in a soil-less system, in this case, the roots were suspended in a nutrient solution that was oxygenated with a steady flow of air bubbles. There are eight different treatments necessary to demonstarte the most commonly seen plant deficiencies. These deficiencies are Nitrogen, Potassium, Phosphorous, Magnesium, Calcium, Boron, and Iron, plus one set of the plants grown in a complete solution for comparison. The deficiency symptoms really start to show after several weeks growth in the various "deficient" solutions.
The effects of pH on nutrient availability--Brocolli and eggplant are grown in pots containing soils with different buffering capacities(sand or potting mix). The plants are grown for several weeks while being watered with nutrient solutions of high and low pH. The nutrient deficiencies can be identified visually on the plants that are not getting enough nitrogen or other nutrients from the soil.
Variety Trials--Several varieties of lettuce and raddishes are grown in different potting mixes to observe the performance of the varieties selected. These plants are tasted at the end of the experiment to find which ones would be most desirable for the consumer, as important a consideration as the growing qualities of a variety.
Seed germination tests--Seeds of comparable varieties of many different vegetables from different suppliers were germinated to compare the quality of material from the different companies. Checked for weed-seed content and viability.

This course is offered in the Spring semester of odd-numbered years.

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