Tuesday 10 April 2012

07 April 2012


Got my woolly hat on in the office, it must be Easter Bank Holiday. I am wearing a lot more than just the woolly hat just in case your mind was wandering already. Lots of good news this week with hosepipe restrictions in some areas and snow ravaging the north of the country after all that balmy weather. We got off quite lightly with some cold but not too bad overall, mind you the electric consumption went up a bit with the overnight heating in the propagation house needed to cover for the loss of our oil fired hot air heater. Should have a new heater in place in a week or two, just as the weather warms up again. Naturally the week before Easter is usually very busy shipping out all those orders ready for the holiday rush to the nurseries and garden centres and this past week was no exception. Thanks to everyone for their prompt ordering this week which helped a lot in getting things organised so quickly, if only everything went so smoothly when the pressure is on. We had one tyre repair last Saturday, followed by another on a different van on Tuesday, then our brand new big van threw a wobbly on Wednesday, half way round the deliveries. Lights and warning sirens went off while driving along near Gatwi ck and the garage was summoned. They attended fairly promptly and plugged in the computer to find all systems ok, it must have been an electrical hiccup and all should be fine. 15 minutes later on the M25, off they go again and the gears stop changing but Phil got it on the hard shoulder ok. To be fair the garage where brilliant, organising a tow back to Ferndown and getting a hire van there to transfer the load and driver on to. So, sorry to those who missed out on Wednesday and thanks for allowing us to reschedule for Friday morning, that was a great help. They have narrowed the fault gown to a control box and we should be back to normal on Wednesday, so we will have to manage with the rather sad hire van until then.
We had our first delivery of biological control predators come in this week, a bottle of 5,000 flying aphid predators, a couple
of bags of predatory mites (500,042 mites, approx) that lunch on thrips and other soft bodied pests, a small number of
whitefly predator cards and a bucket of BYO (breed your own) beetles which feed on small compost based pests like sciarid fly larvae which can be a problem in warm moist places like our propagation tunnels. The bucket breeding system maintains a multiplying population of beetles of which a proportion will climb out of the bucket and spread around the tunnel hunting for food. I have to remember to water and feed the bucket population with special beetle food to keep it going and we should get regular beetle output for 10 weeks or so. We can move the bucket about to populate three tunnels with the predator which should make it pretty good value. The other predators and a few different ones will continue to be introduced through the spring and summer to maintain viable populations so we should only need to spray the odd area if a pest gets out of control or if we get outbreaks of the large American Lupin Aphid which has no commercially available UK predator. All the predators released do occur naturally in the UK so there is no risk of introducing a bigger imported alien problem at a later date.
Big game later today with Southampton playing local rivals Portsmouth, Caroline has already left to get her place at the fron t of the pie queue as it is a sell-out crowd. It is all getting a bit tense with West Ham and Reading both pressing Saints hard for the two automatic promotion places and Portsmouth trying to avoid the drop. Hopefully it won’t get to heated, it is only a game after all and as long as everyone has a nice time and tries hard, what does it really mat ter.
Even more important than the point we one from the top skittles team this week, was seeing our star player Roger return to support us after his heart problem. He was on top form, jolly, positive, as down to earth as ever and inspired several stick -ups on his arrival. It was great to see him back and have a hug. Well done all his friends and family and the NHS for seeing him through a tricky time.
Availability
Lots of spring growth coming on, loads of lovely stuff. It all looks so good I can’t think of anything I can highlight! Buy lots. Eco News
Turbine menders here again this week. The same problem as before, Jackdaws trying to build nests under all 3 generator covers, despite the netting put in last week. They pulled out a sensor wire which registered as a fault on one and got a bit of twig caught in the turbine which made it click on another. They have all been rewired and hopefully that will do the trick, although they did see two Jackdaws hanging upside down from the netting flapping their wings and bouncing about trying to dislodge it! Gosh, cheeky blighters.
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Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

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