Monday 25 January 2016

Hairy Roller Coaster

A hectic week of ups and downs. Very cold early in the week, struggling to get the outside work done and fingers mobile in sub zero temperatures yet this morning I’m in the office with the door wide open and no heaters on. Naturally the heating in the weaning tunnel broke down in the cold snap, luckily the warmer section with the most sensitive stock was ok but the frost protection area tripped out. The hot water was circulating but no fans running to move the air about. Electricians summoned and heaters sorted by the end of the day. Over time, water had tracked through a cracked plastic junction box cover down the inside of a length of the cable, filling one of the fan switches with water. A bit of a freak combination of events, which fooled the electrician for quite a while. The fault seems to have upset the control computer too but hoping to sort that out next week.
A tense start to the week was compounded by my impending compulsory spraying assessment on Thursday. As of last November I no longer qualified under ‘grandfather rights’ (being old, and wise(!) enough not to need an official sprayer qualification) to apply chemicals with our knapsack sprayer. I tend to get a bit over sensitive about these rare incursions onto the nursery by anyone looking to test my worthiness, so I was hoping to be mega prepared for a slightly unknown level of interrogation. Needless to say we were so busy I had little spare time and ended up flying by the seat of my pants as usual. Luckily we have a lovely little, very nicely organised, chemical store and fairly limited chemical and equipment range to deal with, so it was reasonably easy to make a sensible impression of how we apply the products we do. The large number of alternatives to sprays we utilise is right up the street of the modern day best practice of pest and weed control, so I pressed lots of the right buttons there. I now officially meet with the standards of competency required, hurrah, now I can relax and enjoy this moment of glory. OK done that.
Caroline is spending her Sunday packing a good sized microprop order for a delivery on Monday. Possibly a moment to rejoice in some early high value sales, compensating for the interruption to the weekend, but unfortunately no, she has just called through to say that quite a lot of the rain last night, is now residing on the floor of the growth room, Ace.
Had a great day out yesterday with friends at Taunton racecourse, perfect weather and lots of excitement. I don’t go racing often but I do enjoy the occasional flutter in good company. There was plenty of ridicule at my tactics of betting each-way on relative outsiders and a run of 11 races on the trot (including the previous meeting) with zero return was backing them up and getting me down. But my luck turned on the very last race and I won back all my dosh. Neither the owner or trainer turned up to see their horse run in a 6 horse race which usually points to ultra low expectations, but the race ended with two leaders falling (all ok) leaving my grey to romp home at 14/1. I tried desperately not to look too smug and failed spectacularly.
Sad about David Bowie’s passing last week, I haven’t followed a lot of his recent stuff but grew up through a lot of his earlier incarnations, a great artist who entertained and pushed back a lot of boundaries. Then a few days later The Strypes release a youthfully energetic, joyous live album to light my fire again. Oh to be young again. Onwards and upwards.
Minimum delivery reduction for the winter.
During the winter our range of available stock is limited by the lack of enthusiasm of a lot of stock to show their face in the cold, but we still have a few evergreen hardy sorts doing their thing and a few early season show offs too. I know it can be tricky putting together a minimum order of a full trolley (21 trays) at this time of year so if you fancy a few trays but can’t get to 21 we are happy to reduce the minimum to 12 trays for local drops and 15 trays for a bit further afield. Drop us a line and we will try and put together a few orders to make it work for everyone.
Availability highlights
Dainty flowered hardy Cyclamen coum are in colour/bud now, including the silvered leaved form too, They should flower from now until April. Not the face full of flower of the pot plant types, but a continuous classy show of hardy blooms. The relatively mild winter, so far, has encouraged the Pulmonaria’s and Erysimums into bud and some are even showing some colour too. They are nice chunky plants with lots of potential and if the weather doesn’t go drastically cold there are more to follow. The Tulips and Alliums are poking through nicely with roots bursting through the pot sides, if anyone needs a few bulbs,
Have a good one, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

Wednesday 20 January 2016

Hairy House

Morning all,

A taste of winter at last. Not quite as cold as expected over the last few days but still a bit of a shock after such a mild winter so far. Just about the right level for the plants to start with, a nice cooling to get them used to it rather than shocking them too much with monster changes. Having seen the forecast we succumbed and turned on the central heating on Friday, just a couple of radiators downstairs but what a difference. Just a bit anxious now that we will struggle to turn it off again especially with the lure of super cheap heating oil again, but just think of all that carbon released. Oh the torment of living with an environmental conscience. The electric consumption on the nursery has leapt with the turning up of the frost protection heaters in all our various shacks and heating the office and coffee shacks over the last few days. Probably something I wouldn’t have noticed 10 years ago before becoming a daily meter reading nerd. It is up by about 60 units a day which is about 25%, it looks a lot on my graphs but actually only costs between £3 or £7 a day depending on whether the turbines are generating or we are importing the power so it’s not going to break the bank. It’s also far cheaper than having to unfreeze or repair burst pipes.
Big decision made on Monday after many years of wishing we could replace the nursery mess-room porta-cabin. We have been hanging on until we could make enough money to justify our existence and the investment in such a decadent non-productive cost. However, a long series of replacement plastic sheet roofs, plywood patches on the floor and walls, slabs supporting the failing floor joists, corex boards filling in the broken window, door adjustments allowing closure in the shape-changing door frame and wide ranging collection of rare fungal colonies on various wall patches, forced our hand on Monday when we decided we can’t wait for those elusive good days we have to act now. Executive decision made, we have ordered up a very well insulated, double glazed, environmentally sympathetic eco structure, slightly smaller than the original but with a pitched roof (no more flat roof leaks) and ‘easy’ self construct design. Yes we have ordered a shed. It’s due in a couple of weeks, I’ll let you know how we get on. I can’t believe what a relief it is to see an end in sight for that porta-cabin, and not just for me. Bring on The Wendy House.
I set aside my Jive evening on Tuesday to attend a meeting organised by AHDB (used to be the HDC) to discuss the future direction of the organisation who take a big chuck of our turnover as a compulsory levy. I’m not really into this sort of thing, we are too small and industry politics have always been a bit of a turnoff, I struggle with the establishment element, I need to plough my own furrow. Anyway my main reason for attending was to bump into other nursery folk and having a bit of a social while eating bacon butties paid for out of my levy, I could slip away early and still get a jive session in, to round off the evening. There have been a series of these meetings held around the country to help push AHDB expenditure in the direction the levy payers needed, so quite important you would think. Unfortunately for central southern England I was the only representative for the entire horticultural sector, so not just ornamentals but fruit, veg, glasshouse, trees, landscape the lot. The rest of the audience were farmers from all sorts of sectors. Unfortunately I had been
identified as the only horticulturist present by AHDB representatives and any chance of an early exit were scuppered. If the AHDB research suddenly lurches into Wendy Houses you will know who to blame.

Minimum delivery reduction for the winter.
As the winter arrives our range falls away with the many deciduous varieties withdrawing into the relative warmth of the compost, but we still have a few evergreen hardy sorts doing their thing. I know it can be tricky putting together a minimum order of a full trolley (21 trays) at this time of year so if you fancy a few trays but can’t get to 21 we are happy to reduce the minimum to 12 trays for local drops and 15 trays for a bit further afield. Drop us a line and we will try and put together a few orders to make it work for everyone.

Availability highlights
Dainty flowered hardy Cyclamen coum are in colour/bud now, including the silvered leaved form too, They should flower from now until April. Not the face full of flower of the pot plant types, but a continuous classy show of hardy blooms. The mild winter, so far, has encouraged the Pulmonaria’s and Erysimums into bud and some are even showing some colour too. They are nice chunky plants with lots of potential and if the weather doesn’t go drastically cold there are more to follow. The Tulips and Alliums are poking through nicely with roots bursting through the pot sides, if anyone needs a few bulbs.

Have a good one, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

Tuesday 12 January 2016

Hairy Trussing

Morning all,

Happy New Year to everyone. Looking forward to a heart warming and productive 2016 down this end, I hope yours is a good one too and our thoughts go out to anyone facing tough challenges whether from recent climate issues or things closer to the heart.
There has been a long festive break since my last update and there have been loads of things happening along the way. I always imagine this as our quiet time of year but it’s been a riot of activity, most of it, although not all, very positive, which is just what we need when the weather has been so miserable for so many around the country.
The Christmas run up went swimmingly starting with a very positive meeting with the bank manager who was very pleased with the overall financial improvement, We easily convinced him about the light at the end of the tunnel and dispelled all notions that it was in fact the train coming in the opposite direction! Good news like this always lightens the mood for a delicious Christmas lunch for everyone down at The Plough which was just great. We even managed to juggle the work load in the lab to get Christmas Eve off for the majority Polish staff for whom that day is pretty special.
The Christmas break was lovely, lots of family, dietary consumption and games. A fantastic monster turkey lunch at Richard and Pollyann’s nearly came a cropper when the main course refused to enter the oven until extra trussing just about pulled everything together. I am personally now in a similar position trying to hold back on input and upping the trussing. We again hosted the annual post Christmas family and friends hockey and chilli bonanza, On the one beautiful sunny day we had, 15 a side plus supporters may have been a bit crowded but everyone safely staggered off the pitch in the end, Caroline scored her annual goal (with her lacrosse stick) and as usual it ended in an honourable draw (4-4). Over the years the balance of players has changed drastically, when we started many of the youngsters were toddlers and it was the grown-ups showing off, but now the boot is on the other foot and they fly by us as if we’re not there. What is going on? It’s turning into a thought provoking annual reality check, not a bad thing really.
I can’t believe we have only been back at work a week, we‘ve seen so much activity in just a few days. Sadly we heard on Monday that one of our lab ladies, Bozena is not too well and will be off for a little while, so we wish her and her family well and hope to see her again after a speedy recovery. Consequently we now have another new lab trainee in need of encouraging and nurturing through the challenges of learning a completely new set of skills. The lab are at full tilt which is always a challenge so early in the year, juggling which varieties get priority to meet all the various deadlines, while coping with training new staff and supply chain challenges, On the nursery, the last badly ruptured tunnel got nicely recovered, our heated weaning tunnel had a big side vent replaced, we sent out a nice few orders, the forklift died and got repaired, the new batch of LED growth room lights arrived, lots of plants got cut back/tidied up and the new seasons micro-prop pricking-out got started. It’s all go.

Minimum delivery reduction for the winter.
As the winter arrives our range falls away with the many deciduous varieties withdrawing into the relative warmth of the compost, but we still have a few evergreen hardy sorts doing their thing. I know it can be tricky putting together a minimum order of a full trolley (21 trays) at this time of year so if you fancy a few trays but can’t get to 21 we are happy to reduce the minimum to 12 trays for local drops and 15 trays for a bit further afield. Drop us a line and we will try and put together a few orders to make it work for everyone.

Availability highlights
Dainty flowered but hardy Cyclamen coum are showing bud now in all three separate colours and now the silvered leaved form too, They should flower from now until April. You don’t get the face full of flower of the pot plant types but a continuous classy steady show of hardy blooms.
The mild winter, so far, has encouraged the Pulmonaria’s and Erysimums into bud and some are even showing some colour too. They are nice chunky plants with lots of potential and if the weather doesn’t go drastically cold there will be more to follow. The evergreen Bergenia’s are showing signs of fresh growth and early bud formation although it is likely to be a while before they show strong colour.
The Tulips and Alliums are poking through nicely with roots bursting through the pot sides, if anyone needs a few bulbs,.
Have a good one, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries