A little bit more warmth and some sunshine made for a jolly week on the nursery, the plants are looking more and more spring like and pre season tension is beginning to rise. Hopefully the worst of the winter is behind us and we can all get stuck into an exciting spring and summer. It’s always a funny time of year, things are about to go manic which is exciting but the cashflow hasn’t kicked in yet which is less motivating when looking for the cash to clear the bills over the next month. We want to do lots of work in preparation but without spending anything, a tricky balance to make sometimes. This week went well though, we started the spring potting, finished installing some more capillary matting in the propagation tunnel and recovered the two production tunnels that lost their covers in the January winds. The tunnel covers we had in stock and because we had previously emptied the stock from the tunnels we instantly created lots of clean potting space.

Suffered terribly during the week from old folk’s caffeine overdose. We had a skittles cup game which we sadly lost, but in an effort to keep awake towards the end of the evening we both had a coffee. Great for the skittles but rubbish for getting to sleep later, it must have been brewing for hours! Two thirty the next morning we are both watching telly, both still buzzing and getting cross knowing in a few hours we would be getting up again. Had a long night last night to make up a bit just need to do it again tonight. How come it takes so long now to get over one cup of coffee?

Busy weekend coming up, I’ve got our usual game of hockey this afternoon, lovely day for it, then a trip away on Sunday for an over 50’s cup game. Just a short trip to Jersey! I don’t know quite why I said yes, other than everyone else seemed so excited about it. I know I won’t be able to walk on Monday having played twice and I hate flying. The weather looks dodgy for the flight, it’s a small plane and I am told the runway is virtually in the sea, sounds great.

Eco News

We had a visit from Neil the expert pest and disease man from Fargro who is helping us get our bio controls organised on a more commercial footing. There are now an immense range of biological controls available which is great news for reducing the use of chemicals but not all are really commercially viable. It was great to be able to sort out a sensible regime to get effective results without breaking the bank. We will be introducing a range of predators, increasing the use of bio insecticides (bacteria and fungi which naturally attack other fungi and pests) and making more specific use of chemicals to target individual pests on individual crops. There are odd tricky subjects like the American Lupin Aphid which attacks just lupins. This is an imported wide spread pest that has few natural predators so does need some chemical control, where as we can get buy in 6 types of aphid predator to cope with other native aphids. With our new irrigation system and pump house we can now also install a compost tea application programme which will dose the nursery through the summer with beneficial bacteria and fungi strengthening the overall health of the crops. As well as making the crops more resilient to many pests and diseases it also supplies low levels of foliar feed which means we can reduce the levels of fertiliser in the compost which helps towards the cost of applying the tea. Neil liked our idea of planting small islands of native hedging close to the tunnels to provide
some extra overwintering habitat and did suggest some underplanting of Nepeta, Rudbekia and Solidago to attract the hoverflies in the summer which we will try out.

If anyone lives in Hampshire and is short on house insulation check out www.insulatehampshire.co.uk where you can now get free cavity wall insulation and either free or very cheap loft insulation to top up to the minimum requirement of 11.5 inches. Alternatively contact your energy supplier as I heard this week that some are offering financial rewards for installing free insulation, as the take up was not high enough. Do it if you can, it seems like a really dull purchase but saves money year after year and will save more and more as energy prices continue to rise.

Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries