Morning!
It is another special day today with another big game for Southampton and it’s on the telly later, let’s hope it all goes our way and West Ham don’t sneak in at the last moment. Caroline is already on the way to the game and will hopefully return in high spirits in a few hours time otherwise our wedding anniversary may pass by under a cloud of doom! At the moment any distraction from the ongoing cruddy weather and slowdown in sales is a welcome relief for all of us. I have been hearing from retailers and growers this last week about the rather long lull in sales we are all seeing during this damp spell. If it’s any consolation we are all in it together and you are not alone. We can only do our best with what we are dealt on the weather front and hope that the purses fall open with gay abandon when the sunshine returns.

Anyway back to the distractions. We have had a really good week this week focusing on improving things in as many ways as we can. We have been doing a bit more tidying, spacing and potting (ever the optimist) and trying to overcome a few of the long-term niggles that hamper our production efforts. We took delivery of another trial batch of peat-free compost this week as we strive to find a mix that suits our production system and the coir pots. I know we have a few people champing at the bit for us to get this sorted so that they can get well and truly stuck into a bit of hairy retailing. I also tried out a couple of different dressings to cover the surface of our module trays we use in the propagation houses. We have always had a battle on to control moss and liverwort growth at this early stage of the production and have now come across a couple of potential solutions. One is fine granules of cork which spread very thinly on the module, flow nicely around the plantlet, if it is vertical enough in its growth habit, stay dry and block the light from getting to the compost surface so stopping the moss and liverworts. It looks great but being cork is very easily dislodged by movement or wind. The second trial is a product developed by Tref called GO M6 for the seedling producing companies. It seeks to overcome all the issues involved in module coverings, it flows easily, spreads thinly, stops moss and liverwort, sticks to the module surface but without forming a solid layer, shows the dry/wet state of the compost below it and makes the tea. It is a mixture of 5 or 6 ingredients whose physical properties combine to achieve all this, so hopefully we save lots of labour tidying stock later in the process. Let’s hope it works.

Our phone system was repaired on Monday so we are now back on wireless phones again should you need to get hold of us. I’m not saying we will answer the phone but perhaps if the sun comes out we may feel up to it!

The fillinable Word version of the availability list seems to be working well now judging by the number of people now using it. Let me know if you have any issues with it and I will tweak when I get a moment. Spring is springing and things are looking yummy.

Eco News

They say one swallow doesn’t make a summer, well the second has arrived and nesting discussions a re proceeding in the donkey shed. Now we are looking out for the house martins which tend to be two or three weeks later.

Another big improvement on the nursery this week was the discovery of how to adjust the pressure regulators on the overhead sprinkler lines we put in a while ago. I always blamed our poor water pressure for the slightly disappointing spray pattern which created too many little regular dry spots, but after the new pumps were set up in the winter I had hoped this would resolve itself. Naturally it didn’t and this week I found time to investigate further. The irrigation company kindly se nt me a pressure gauge to fit on the spray lines to check we were getting what we needed. The good news was that all the tunnels were working at very similar pressures despite the rather varied range of pipe sizes that have been installed over the years.

The bad news was that the pressure was just a little too low. At this point the penny dropped that the pressure regulators might not be set at the right pressure. Having never used these before I had assumed they were preset and I couldn’t alter them, however after dismantling one I found out how to readjust it and I was away. With the pressure bumped up they now look to be working brilliantly and my faith in the new system is restored. Although the pressure is greater we will now be using less water as we don’t have to overwater to keep the old dry spots damp enough.

If you need a fax list please let us know, pick it up from the website or alternately send an email address.

Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries