Greenhouse coordinator offers good advice

While most of us are still relaxing for the winter or are reading our seed catalogs, one expert greenhouse operator is very busy. She is getting her plants grown to beautify myriad flower beds up on the hill come this spring.

For the past 18 years, Marcene Younker, the greenhouse coordinator for the University of Utah, has tended the greenhouses. She and her crew plant and maintain all of the flower beds on campus and also care for the landscapes at the president's and vice president's homes.

As a native of Cache Valley, she got her start in horticulture at Utah State University. "I got interested in horticulture when I took a home horticulture class at USU. I fell in love with the idea of that being a career.

"I moved to Salt Lake City away from USU but I discovered USU classes being taught in Farmington that I took. I eventually moved back to Cache Valley to get my horticulture degree."

Her focus at this time of year is to get her plants up and growing. She has many choices of how, what and when to propagate, but she favors perennial plants.

"I operate the greenhouse and propagate the plants many different ways. I propagate from seeds, from cuttings and from divisions," she says.

"Most of the flower beds are mostly perennials. I spot plant those beds with annuals to give me more summer color. There are still a few beds that are only annuals and there are a few that we plant for spring color with pansies and bulbs."

Because of her extensive experience in plant propagation, I asked her to share advice on how to start plants. She shares her knowledge to help homeowners get their plants off to a good start.

"Most homeowners do not have enough light to propagate plants easily. That means they will have to build a light table of some sort to be successful.

"Next, you have to have to the right temperature. For most seeds you need to have soil temperatures of 70 degrees. Perennials can be a little cooler but plants like begonias need to be much warmer. Some perennials are even trickier because they need a combination of cool, moist conditions followed by warmer temperatures."

The final difficulty is the right growing mix. Younker buys commercial mixes and she starts her plants in a germination mix that has very fine particles. She then switches to a coarser mix that has larger particles of bark, perlite or pumice to improve the drainage.