Our tour group was comprised of eight people and our guide, a reasonable size for walking through fairly narrow areas. Our first stop was in one of the pest control labs in the back, where they study ways of fighting fungal blights and flora-destroying bugs with predatory insects that feed on or otherwise disable the destructive ones without harming the plants. Our tour guide handed out several vials of ladybugs to be released later. Greg took his ladybug-carrying duty with great seriousness. I remembered my mom trying a similar thing with her rose plants, gently transferring any ladybugs she found to them so they could eat the aphids there.
We headed outside and passed by one of the labs where they're growing plant samples and actively doing join research with the U.S. Department of Agriculture on various plant blights.
After that, we walked into one of the hydroponic greenhouses. This is where the walking tour starts revisiting parts of the boat tour, but from the other side. Here, pots of colorful edible flowers, herbs, and giant brussels sprouts dangle from overhead conveyer belts. Our guide admitted that this part of the setup was done primarily to look cool, but it is a tourist attraction in addition to a working greenhouse, so it's quite understandable. Here we also learned about making our own miniature hydroponic gardens at home, using an aquarium as the base. We're considering making an herb garden, since we would like to have fresh herbs available and neither the strong sun exposure of our front yard nor the shadowed parts of our backyard are conducive to growing them.
In the next greenhouse, we revisited the vegetables: cucumber vines, tomato trees, romaine spirals, and a patch of lettuce that spelled out the word "Epcot." Here the ladybugs were gently released to perform their pest-control duties. We also got to see the Mickey ear-shaped molds used for the cucumbers and got to have a sample of a non-Mickey one. It tasted pretty much like a normal cucumber, though I thought it was a bit more green than most. The greenhouse after that contained the massive citrus and squash, including a nine-pound lemon with a two-inch thick rind that could produce up to a gallon of juice, and giant pumpkins that could be the start of a Cinderella coach growing program.
Next, we headed back to the fish tanks. We discovered that tilapia is one of the most efficient fish to commercially farm, as they have a very high growth rate. We each got a handful of pellets and got to feed them They're very lively at feeding time, so there was a lot of splashing around. We also got a look at the huge bass, the large catfish, and the (no oxymoron) giant shrimp. I guess they're more like prawns. There was also a tank full of small alligators, which surprised me. I'm not really used to thinking of gators as something to be farmed, but they apparently have their commercial uses as well.
Finally, we made it to the last greenhouse, which was the first one we entered on the boat tour. Here we got a close-up look at a banana tree, which I had never seen the flowers of before. I had also never seen a pineapple plant, either. There were also a whole variety of teas: the standard tea plant, but also mint and jasmine and several others. There was also an herb garden, and we played a game where we passed around vials of different types and had to guess what they were. The ginger I got right away, but embarrassingly enough I missed the vanilla.
After that, we retraced our path through all the greenhouses, thanked our tour guide, and rejoined the hustle and bustle of the park. It was just about time to head off for Soarin', which we'll cover in the next entry.
~Kate
Photographs by Greg Sanders and family, available under a creative commons license.
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