Morning all,


What a relief, nice and damp this morning after some cooler weather and a nice bit of rain last night. Very lucky with the rain holding off until the end of King Somborne annual flower show and fete on Saturday. We do a little stage display of a few bits and pieces in flower which always seems to go down well. They very much bank on dry weather as the key to getting the income in for getting by the rest of the year, the ice creams and tea/cake stands did brilliantly as the local brass band played away, a lovely English summer scene. Lost a fortune on the skittles and putting games and failed to win the raffle but drowned my sorrows by going out with the committee for the end of show pub dinner. A wild time was had by all as usual!

It was a tough week on the technical front with slow progress on installing our evaposensor which apparently needs a different chip programmed and installed to achieve what we paid for when we put in the system. That’s another £200 or so and that still leaves me to fit it. Not got instructions or correct wires for that yet but I’m sure it will come together now I have an expert on the case. Mind you it could take a few months for the chip to be sorted as the company is very busy at the moment so I won’t get too excited yet. My little USB temperature and humidity logger arrived this week which is the key bit of kit to use with the HDC powdery mildew predictor programme. Simply plug and play as usual. Actually rather unusually it did just that. It is set to record the values every 30mins at the moment and produces a nice little graph as part of its programme. The tricky bit was getting the files produced by the device to load into the HDC programme, it looked so simple on the demo I saw at the open day a couple of weeks ago all working so simply, however that had already had expert input where as mine just had me. Spent most of my Saturday trying to get it to work, trying to make sense of the instructions written for the programme. Why can’t they get a real person to write the instructions rather than someone who already knows too much. I always end up making up bits myself where the gaps appear to be and naturally I have already had a go at doing it without reading the instructions at all. Ended up writing a rather tense email asking for help so hopefully someone will take pity. What have I done, why does everything I get hold of never work right. I know it’s just me everyone one else has such perfect lives.

Availability

Aster Purple Dome is about to burst forth with its short height and big purple flowers. Mildew resistant and showy, a great plant for any garden.

Stunning Hemerocallis are showing plenty of bud with colour. The dark flowered varieties Crimson Pirate and Pardon Me looking great, and the two-tone blooms of Frans Hals and Pandora’s Box are open. The deep colour of Pink Damask contrast beautifully with the deep gold of Aten. Don’t forget the large flowered Catherine Woodbury with her big pink blousy heads and of course the ever flowering Stella de Oro.

Exotic Oxalis Iron Cross is up and in flower. Black and green leaves contrast nicely with the red/pink flowers but very few left. Stunning foliage colours of Heuchera Melting Fire, Marvellous Marble and Palace Purple alongside the fresh strong green of Malachite, all great additions to any garden.

We have our best Japanese Anemones ever at the moment, stonkingly bushy plants. Most are throwing up their first flower stems with Serenade looking very strong and the short white of Andrea Atkinson just getting going. Numbers are dwindling. The grasses are coming into their own at the moment. Carex Evergold and Ice Dance both look fantastic and the silver variegated Miscanthus Morning Light is very strong this year with the first delicate flower heads just appearing. Panicum Prairie Fire looks great too with its upright elegant blue/grey foliage.

Eco stuff

Attended the Winchester Council celebration coffee break in town last week, rejoicing in the successful delivery of Carbon Smart awards to 100 local businesses which is all very encouraging. Most are just starting out on their journey so have three levels to achieve, blue, silver and gold. Luckily we were able to leap start in with the gold which is nice recognition for everyone here for all the hard work of the last few years. Still a way to go yet but things are still getting better. It would be great to have a bit of spare cash to splash on some more improvements which in turn would save us more but after the two seasons we have had there isn’t much of that about. I have my shopping list of energy saving kit all ready just need a couple of more encouraging seasons to build confidence again.

The turbines are two years old now and I believe we are still the biggest wind installation in Hampshire which is pathetic. For a county with some much being consumed and CO2 produced is no-one taking any responsibility for their actions. Ok I know the answer. Life is too easy, but watch out it will creep up and bite your bum Hampshire.

Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries