Hairy Display

Morning All,
Busy weekend again with a hectic start on Friday evening. Our annual artistic floral extravaganza of the King Somboune Horticultural Society Show stage display all set up after work on Friday ready for the Saturday show and afternoon dismantling. We have it down to a fine art after so many years. 13 trays of plants, a dozen wooden boxes to create a bit of extra height at the back and cleaning kit to tidy up the mess I make. It’s not something I particularly look forward to, we never have a plan just pick out what we have with some colour and fly by the seat of out pants. It always looks pretty good even if I say so myself and despite a desperate shortage of plants in full flower this year it looks fine, if perhaps a bit pink for my taste. The Erigeron karvinskianus turned out to be a brilliant filler, loads of delicate flower filling in any embarrassing gaps without dominating the display. Rewarded ourselves with a late curry and now bracing myself for the return trip to dismantle it all later. Tonight’s reward will be pub supper with the celebrating and tired show committee; we know how to live it up!
Back to some nice cooler weather now which I much prefer. The summer holidays are here which is lovely for those having one, but quite challenging for those of us left behind. We were a couple down last week, three next and five the following week. I am hopeful that we might have a couple of students in the pipeline to help bolster numbers and get us through the growing list of work to be done before the end of the summer. August on Monday, how did that happen. Caroline’s Saints season ticket has arrived, first game in a couple of weeks. That means I must be getting close to the start of the hockey season, must start my fitness programme. I think I’ll stick to the usual pre-season routine of doing sod all and just suffer for a week or two until the legs remember what they are supposed to do.
Must go and get the herb seed sowing done, I have the weekend to get them done so that should be one job ticked off. I also have the next batch of nematodes to release on any vine weevils still daring to show themselves. One of the highlights of the week was watching the ADHB video of the emergency vine weevil summit held a few weeks ago. It was pretty doom and gloom filled and I came out feeling pretty smug. After a couple years of using Met 52 (bio insecticide in the compost) which should have been controlling the beasties, we built up quite a good population and were getting quite worried. However putting on the nematodes through the irrigation has worked really well especially when we adopted the tactic of little and often. We are now applying at less than half rate every 4 weeks from April to September. We use a mix of different nematodes and apply them over everything rather than just selecting those plants that are most vulnerable. Our theory is that egg laying goes on all summer until the cold weather arrives so why not keep a constant pressure up on the pest population to gradually knock it down and likewise why just target the most vulnerable crops, that leaves other places the pest can breed and repopulate treated crops. We used to see quite a few adults in the summer as we picked up or cleared crops but over the last two years the sightings and tell tale leaf notching have reduced drastically. We’ve seen three this year, one on the nursery, two on a delivery of soft fruit from the farm garden down the road.

Availability highlights
There is a small batch of fresh Coreopsis Sunfire back on the list, short and bushy with plenty of bud coming. This year’s hardy Fuchsia’s are wonderfully bushy plants showing masses of flower and bud. Veronica bonariensis are coming into bud. The long flowering pink Geranium Mavis Simpson is romping away now, not a huge number left but full of vigour and promise. Buds are there on most and some colour showing.
The first of the buds are showing on most of our mini garden Chrysanthemum range. There will be masses to follow of these non frost hardy stunners. Tight compact plants with very dinky flowers in a great colour range. Plenty of Erigeron karvinskianus on stream now and in bud and flower. This one blooms for an age.
A widening range of Asters are appearing, bud and colour on a few and the rest won’t be long away. We have several new varieties, many mildew free/resistant (ageratoides and frikartii types) and we are working on some techniques for earlier flowering batches for next year. Meanwhile we have a fresh batch of strong Aster frikartii Monch which are just lengthening their stems in readiness for flowering.
Have a good one, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries