Sunday 25 March 2012

Make the most of the sunshine. Looks like we will have a settled start to next week too after this summery weekend. I wonder if BBQ sales have taken off early. It is all slightly disconcerting as it was only a few weeks ago that we were in the depths of that cold snap and now legs are out all over the place, I even played hockey yesterday without my vest! Hope you haven’t had too many confused gardeners asking about the summer bedding yet?!
Had a busy week as sales build in the lovely weather and potting is now well under way. Not quite manic yet, just bubbling under. I squeezed in my last game of hockey of the season yesterday in a hard fought and sweaty 1 -0 loss. Lovely pint and sandwich after as felt we like we earned it.

Irrigation is running higher than usual for March and naturally behaves beautifully until you really need it! Having trouble with our slave pump which is supposed to step in when pressure falls. It seems to forget unless I re-set it by turning it all on and off again. Thank goodness for all those years of IT training. It has happened a couple of times this week so I suppose I will have to bite the bullet and phone the manufacturers and follow their instructions. Not something I’m very good at.

A relatively quiet weekend after a couple of busy ones. I survived two games last Saturday, came fifth out of twenty in the annual Wellow Growmore quiz and had a delicious family Mothering Sunday lunch with five mums and lots of helpers. Nice to get back to work for a rest.

Had an interesting trip out on Thursday afternoon to test out the new nursery costing programme developed by the HDC. Not perhaps the friendliest user presentation but at this early stage it looks like it could be a useful tool for any grower wanting to check out the cost of producing individual crops on the nursery. If nothing else it does make you take note of the amounts of time and input put into each operation involved in producing the end product. Once you have some basic info to enter it is quite simple to adjust bits here and there to see what elements have the biggest influence on margins. Apparently one grower was surprised what an influence price made! Perhaps there is hope for the rest of us after all. One of the biggest influences is the crop waste element. This can be crop losses which can be difficult to avoid sometimes but more often than not it is over production by over optimistic planning. Growers tend to think it will always be better next year and we can’t afford to be without lots of stock, big mistake. Not the test will come, can I avoid the temptation of buying in more young plants when the sun comes out, it will be a struggle!

Eco News

I have one very happy brother in law who is relishing this sunny weather as he has recently finished a couple of solar panel installations on his farm. On top of this he heard on Friday that the government had lost their High Court appeal and are going to have to pay a higher rate of FIT to all the solar installations put in from December 2011 to March 2012. Lucky boy. Meanwhile our turbines are suffering from too much still sunny weather and output is less than hoped for over the last few weeks. They are still doing something just not enough. Still looking on the bright side this might be it for the summer of 2012 and we might make it back up later!

Mum and I sowed the areas under the turbines with a wild flower mix last weekend so they will look yummy come the summer.

Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

No comments:

Post a Comment