Monday 20 July 2015

Hairy Breakout

Morning all,
Massively busy again last week and still plenty of stock looking yummy. A bit of a splurge on microprop sales over the next few weeks seems to mark a bit of a resurgence of grower confidence as stock gets potted on for next year. It’s not setting the world alight but it all helps making ends meet. Still more young plant stock has been arriving, ready to grow on for next season, just need to find the time to make space for it all and get stuck in. The stock we have already moved on is growing away really well but that in itself adds to the pressure to get other things moved on asap, just not enough hours in the day at this time of year.
Big day tomorrow with whole months meat ration to be eaten in one marathon big family session. It’s BBQ time down on the farm celebrating Caroline’s mums birthday. Weather forecast not brilliant but animal protein levels look promising. Sadly no beach body for me this summer, several weeks of excessive home grown fruit consumption and appropriate accompaniments are taking their toll, but delicious none the less. I’m always so full of determination when I step off the scales at the end of the day but it all evaporates as the fridge door opens. On top of it all last week’s slip into comfort eating of numerous bars of dark chocolate to accompany the raspberry glut took me back to teenage levels of dermatological trauma. Lesson learnt, well for a week or two anyway.
Swallows are sitting on the nest again, their first batch lost out to the early cold, second batch of 5 fledged and moved out and now a third lot are hopefully on their way. While we only ever get a single swallow nest we have 15 occupied house martin nests on the house although they only have the one hatching each year. Their mass feeding and chattering in the evening is a joyful part the summer and when all the youngsters get airborne later it’s a sky full of chaos, love it.

Availability highlights
Eucomis autumnalis coming into bud and flower now, a compact summer display of its delightful pale yellow columnar flower spikes.I have just started listing a new range of compact hardy Chrysanthemums. Great little plants with masses of bud already appearing. They are naturally branching with no need for pinching in a lovely colour range. Probably a week or two before much colour appears but cracking plants, Grommit.
Fresh batches of Echinacea now coming on stream, plenty of bud coming on the Pow Wow varieties, Cheyenne Spirit and Prairie Splendour. Flavour of the month it seems. Platycodon Astra Blue is in bud with some colour appearing. Intense blue colouring.The summer flower stems of the Crocosmia are now emerging, pushed on by the higher temperatures. Lucifer has the best scarlet colour making it the most popular although it does get very tall in the pot, Emberglow is tidier yet still impressive. Orange upright flowers of Mistral looking good and the golden varieties of George Davidson and Sunglow now also showing bud.
The Garden Pinks (Dianthus) are beginning to bud up nicely with colour showing on many. Most of the varieties we grow have a delicious scent, classic cottage garden flowers. Lovely compact plants of Verbena Lollipop now showing colour.Absolutely stonking Ajugas in different foliage colours and forms. Fantastic ground cover and bursting with vigour. Summer colour from the Lobelia Fan series already just showing. Burgundy is stonkingly bushy and a great colour. We have one last batch of Rudbeckia Goldsturm looking monstrously strong and the first signs are there of the flower shoots appearing. A great favourite.
The short Campanulas are in bud, a real taste of summer (carpatica blue, white and posharskyana)
Our hardy Fuchsias are producing their seemingly endless supply of bud and flower. Summer sunshine in a pot, Coreopsis are looking brilliant, colour on the Sunfire and plenty of bud on the feathery leaved golden flowered Zagreb.Now in bud and flower are our great range of Leucanthemums. All are now showing colour, all stonkingly bushy plants.Banana Creme has very attractive large daisy flowers of varying shades of cream/pale yellow. Lacrosse is a lovely short white with attractive petal feathering and Snow Lady is a classic compact white.
Have a good one, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

Monday 13 July 2015

Hairy Raspberry

Morning all,
Not sure about my thoughts for this week. Still plenty of good looking stuff to sell and sales are still bowling along nicely. The weather has calmed down a bit which makes life easier on the nursery and we have buckets of fresh raspberries. One of my highlights of the year is a lunchtime treat of fresh raspberries eaten with Green and Blacks dark chocolate chunks, mmmm. Unfortunately I’m feeling a bit anxious about the implications of the Budget disclosures earlier in the week. As one of those exploitative nasty employers paying low wages we look like being hit pretty hard by the new national living wage over the next few years, on top of the new pension charges set to hit us in the next 18 months. I’m not sure at the moment quite what the full effect will be but with such a labour intensive set up as ours some things are going to have to change over that time. The new rates will see many of the lowest wages rise by 10% each year over the next 4 years. This will surely hit hard areas like care industries, veg and fruit picking, retailing and hospitality workers and although I love to see people being paid sensible wages I wonder where the money is going to come from to cover it. Some must be funded by higher prices and others by higher costs to organisations like the NHS and local authorities who are hardly flush at the moment. Rather quietly the zero carbon emission target for new house builds had been dropped by the new government saving an estimated £2,500 per property. A small initial saving with long term effects and a big opportunity missed at a time when large scale house building is set to be encouraged. With luck I’ll be gone before the shit really hits the fan, so why am I so cross? I struggled to the summon the enthusiasm to buy my food rations for the week this morning, as their didn’t seem much point, but I was brought back to earth with a bump as Caroline rolled her eyes in my direction from the other side of the trolley. I thoughtfully rolled them back and made my selection, 7 bars of Green and Blacks.
Well done to Neil Grant (young trendy garden centre star) for winning the Observers Small Business Leader 2015 and our Elaine for sticking it out here for nearly 30 years despite the poor pay and regular beatings.

Availability highlights
Purple spikes of Liatris are now showing colour, bushy and strong but not very many left.Fresh batches of Echinacea now coming on stream, plenty of bud coming on the Pow Wow varieties, Cheyenne Spirit and Prairie Splendour. Flavour of the month it seems. Lovely compact plants of Verbena Lollipop now showing colour. Eucomis autumnalis coming into bud and flower now, a compact summer display of its delightful pale yellow columnar flower spikes.The summer flower stems of the Crocosmia are now emerging, pushed on by the higher temperatures. Lucifer has the best scarlet colour making it the most popular although it does get very tall in the pot, Emberglow is tidier yet still impressive. Golden forms of George Davidson and Sunglow now also showing bud. Summer colour from the Lobelia Fan series already just showing. Burgundy is stonkingly bushy and a great colour. The pastel yellows and oranges of Kniphofia Flamenco are showing nicely but not many left.Don’t miss out on a great fresh crop of Geranium Black Beauty, lots of bud coming and some blue flowers open. The popular dwarf Eryngium Blue Hobbit is in bud now (isn’t there a film out again?) The Garden Pinks (Dianthus) are beginning to bud up nicely with colour showing on many. Most of the varieties we grow have a delicious scent, classic cottage garden flowers. Still plenty of fresh Erigeron karvinskianus shooting all over the place with masses of bud and flower.
Delightful Catananche looking lush with flower stems and buds appearing on both colours. Very attractive plants and very popular when buds and flower are showing. Sold very quickly last year so took a gamble on extra this year, don’t miss out. The short Campanulas are in bud, a real taste of summer (carpatica blue, white and posharskyana) The hardy Fuchsias are producing their seemingly endless supply of bud and flower. Summer sunshine in a pot, Coreopsis are looking brilliant, colour on the Sunfire and plenty of bud on the feathery leaved golden flowered Zagreb and the lovely pale yellow Moonshine. Just a few Sunray left but with masses of bud. Stunning amounts of bud and flower on both Oxalis varieties, great pot fulls.
Just coming into bud and flower are our great range of Leucanthemums. All are now showing colour, all stonkingly bushy plants. Banana Creme has very attractive large daisy flowers of varying shades of cream/pale yellow.
Have a good one, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

Monday 6 July 2015

Hot and Hairy

Morning all,

Phew, that was a hot one.
Had to apply some basic physics principles to the despatch tunnel this week to keep everyone on their feet. Despite doors, open net sides and shade all over the place we still had a significant heat build up but this week I finally bit the bullet and created two new ‘windows’ above the door height, as high as I could get them. Releasing the heat collecting under the roof just made such a huge difference, now I’m cross with myself that I hadn’t done it before.
Still lots of plants finding new homes which is great, fresh stock still coming on line to keep up the summer and autumn interest. We have a few new lines coming along very soon, some small hardy garden chrysanthemums which will be in bud and flower, new asters and more autumn/winter flowering cyclamen. Months of interest and sales to come!
We have started to clear out a few tunnels now, ready for fitting in next year’s stock. It’s great to see a cleaned up tunnel but it’s always quite difficult throwing away and composting the last few plants in a batch although if they look colourful and half decent they usually find their way to a local fete or good cause. Some plants will trim back and come again, bushier than ever but many are just better started afresh. Sods Law always dictates that as soon as I have made the decision to compost a batch a landscape order comes in wanting just that item, but if we are not careful we can end up with bits and pieces hanging about all over the place and when we are growing over 450 varieties it doesn’t take much of each to fill quite a few tunnels.
Cooler next week which is a big relief to me, I’m hopeless in the heat. Ok I know, not much good in the cold either.
Afternoon off now, so I can pop up to the ‘new’ wood at the top of our hill and collect seed heads from the wild primroses we planted there 15 years ago. Then a nice bit of evening sowing to get this crop going for next spring. I got fed up with the rather artificial looking ‘wild’ primroses we were getting delivered by various seedling suppliers.

Availability highlights
Fresh batches of Echinacea now coming on stream, plenty of bud coming on the Pow Wow varieties, Cheyenne Spirit and Prairie Splendour. Flavour of the month it seems.
Lovely compact plants of Verbena Lollipop now showing colour. Our taller variety V. bonariensis is short and chunky at the moment, just too tall for us to flower in the pot but a stunner in the garden.
Eucomis autumnalis coming into bud now, a compact summer display of its delightful pale yellow columnar flower spikes.The summer flower stems of the Crocosmia are now emerging, pushed on by the high temperatures. Lucifer has the best scarlet colour making it the most popular although it does get very tall in the pot, Emberglow is tidier yet still impressive. Summer colour from the Lobelia Fan series already just showing. Burgundy is stonkingly bushy and a great colour.The pastel yellows and oranges of Kniphofia Flamenco are showing nicely but not many left.
Don’t miss out on a great fresh crop of Geranium Black Beauty, masses of bud coming and some blue flowers opening. The popular dwarf Eryngium Blue Hobbit is in bud now (isn’t there a film out again?)
The Garden Pinks (Dianthus) are beginning to bud up nicely with colour showing on many. Most of the varieties we grow have a delicious scent, classic cottage garden flowers. Still plenty of fresh Erigeron karvinskianus shooting all over the place with masses of bud and flower.
Delightful Catananche looking lush with flower stems and buds appearing on both colours. Very attractive plants and very popular when buds and flower are showing. Sold very quickly last year so took a gamble on extra this year, don’t miss out. The short Campanulas are in bud, a real taste of summer (carpatica blue, white and posharskyana)
The hardy Fuchsias are just beginning to produce their seemingly endless supply of bud and flower.
Summer sunshine in a pot, Coreopsis are looking brilliant, colour on the Sunfire and plenty of bud on the feathery leaved golden flowered Zagreb and the lovely pale yellow Moonshine. Just a few Sunray left but with masses of bud. Stunning amounts of bud and flower on both Oxalis varieties, great pot fulls.
Just coming into bud and flower are our great range of Leucanthemums. Snow Lady and Lacrosse have flowers now open. All stonkingly bushy plants, Banana Creme has masses of bud, very attractive large daisy flowers of varying shades of cream/pale yellow. Last few plants of the pale yellow Real Dream left to whoever is quickest. Our Daylily range is throwing up its flower shoots now. The dwarf dark red, Pardon Me looks fab.
Have a good one, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries