Good morning all.
A nice bit of steady weather to get a few more plants sold and get a strong spurt of growth on the new potting getting them well prepared for the early spring sales bonanza. There are a few more new varieties again for the new season which always fills me with hope for exciting sales uptakes and by then we will have our new labels too which should give a real boost to the presentation of the plants.
It still surprises me that after 30 years we find new things each season to take things on to another level, and these labels with their incorporated bamboo skewers should be another leap forward in presentation and practicality for everyone. We have even managed to get sheets of matching blanks labels made so we can print our own near identical extras where needed. Although the costs look very competitive to the bog standard label offering, I am getting slightly nervous about the little extras I have added like individual variety barcodes and the QR codes that will be on the label backs. We are going to have to create a lot of specific on-line info this winter to back it all up as well as changing all the nursery software and paperwork to ensure things run nice and smoothly for everyone. Luckily I don’t get out much so I can devote all those long dark evenings to cussing at computers and their programs which means all that extra development is free. It’s always good to remember your own value.
Quiet weekend after the excitement of Crawleyfest last Saturday. It did turn out to be a fairly exclusive event with a sell out 500 pre-booked £5 ticket, so a good showing and hopefully they made a nice lot of money for the cricket team. Unfortunately due perhaps to not moving in the right circles we got left off the invitation list hence not knowing anything about it until the organiser popped in to collect his plant donation the day before. We did pop in during the afternoon to make further donations to the bar and ace cake van but missed out on the bands. The master stroke of the event was the beer tent, I can definitely recommend a pint or two of a local brew to make a fete pass very pleasantly.
Only one more day of driver CPC training to go. Had a rubbish session this week, learnt nothing and got pretty disillusioned with the outside world after two ‘over enthusiastic’ truckers dominated the day. A display of all the worst aspects of a ‘male’ trucker you could imagine, and some I couldn’t, all put on show. It was a case of heads down to get through the day and qualify as being trained, without saying anything that might mean getting hit or ridiculed. Difficult to believe there was a trainer present. There was no physical threat on the day but the content indicated it was part of their life along with a lot of other nasty stuff. It does make you appreciate what you have at home and at work when you get out, which is a sort of positive outcome!
Well done all you lovely people out there, we will win out in the end, keep it up.
Availability
Fresh stock is growing well and the range is picking up again for the autumn surge!
Asters just beginning to show bud and the first occasional flower and looking great. Helenium’s seem to be the 'in' plant at the moment, featuring a lot in the papers and on the telly over the last couple of weeks.
We have a few varieties at the moment growing away nicely. Hellebourus are just starting to come ready with a few new additions to the range. We are trying a new H. orientalis selection called Crown Dark Purple which is reported to flower after its first winter, it is certainly coming on nicely at the moment. We
have a few H. niger Praecox to try out and three great new H. viridus varieties which are looking very smart and distinctly different from each other. ‘Silver & Rose’ has attractive silvered foliage, ‘White Green’ has deep green leaves with strong cream veining, and ‘Rose Green’ has a more glaucous green leaf with pretty flush of pink in the stems and some leaf veining. Nice short varieties looking enthusiastic in their pots.
We have a great range of good looking very chunky Agapanthus we are producing for the first time this summer.
Wooden Box Collections
If anyone has any of our wooden boxes ready for collection please do drop us an email and we will pop in and retrieve them over the next few weeks. We can then prepare ourselves for some winter whittling and repairs. Thanks.
Have a good one, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
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