I know I’m a bit late but Happy New Year to everyone. I hope you all had a great festive break, although it already seems a long time ago. We are all trying to get back into the swing of things after so many days keeping the soda warm and fridge occupied. Apologies for the lack of communication over the last few weeks, a long bout of man flu struck me down over the last few weeks resulted in a lack of appetite for anything at all, rather dented my productivity! Luckily our festive break was nice and quiet with several visitors cancelling due to illness and the rest disappearing off to foreign parts.
We have had a tough time trying to rebalance the carbon output of the rest of the family but gave it a good go. A modest show on the present front must have helped and a revamp of the house lighting in the New Year to expand LED usage has re- illuminated several rather dingy rooms with lights that actually come on when you throw the switch. One tricky bit was gauging the strength of bulb to install, the lumen count is now the thing to use rather than the old days of wattage. We put a ‘100w equivalent’ (12w) LED bulb (1600 lumen) in the sitting room and I reckon we could have lit a football stadium with it. Moved it to the kitchen instead and it is bright but fine, ‘we’ can see what we are doing in there now with just the one light rather than turning on several. Most of the other lights are just 4-6W, perform beautifully and are super efficient to run. There are some lovely vintage look led bulbs out there but watch out, some are not very efficient, always check the energy rating they should be in the A’s, we nearly got caught out by some cheaper D rated offers..
Nice to see the days drawing out a bit again, an indication that spring is just around the corner. Pre-season preparations are bowling along here, lots of cutting back and tidying in ‘fairly cool’ tunnels by some pretty hardy souls, at least we didn’t have to contend with any of the white stuff that some have had. The winter tidying included the removal from site of our ‘comedy’ van (the little Postman Pat one). It wasn’t hugely old but had done 276,000 miles and was costing way too much to keep in running order. It went off for ‘salvage’ rather than scrap so not a complete right off, but sad to see such a good workhorse disappear. We recently started putting together an updated website which is partly open (usual addresses work). It replaces both our old wholesale and retail sites, one of which was pretty ancient and old fashioned and the other flashier one no longer needed sincewe stopped our online retail sales last autumn. The new site already carries our current 2018 flipbook wholesale catalogue, a copy of our wholesale availability list, a newsletter/blog and other background info. We will be adding more depth over the coming weeks.
The plastic pollution debate seems to be gathering pace, I’m sure there will be plenty of surprise contaminants to appear yet (tea bags, fleece fibres etc), but at least the conversations have started.
Winter delivery minimum orders
Until mid February we are able to drop the minimum order quantity generally to 15 trays and possibly, at a push, to 12 trays if you are very local to Winchester. It is still pretty early in the season but the range is picking up a bit now and we do have a few lines to provide a bit of winter interest and colour should you be looking for some hairy input.
Availability highlights
Despite the winter weather the Erysimum are looking good. Bowles Mauve, Red Jep, Super Bowl Mauve and Sunset are in tight bud already and the others are looking chunky and not far behind on the budding front. The first Pulmonaria showing bud and a little splash of colour is Blue Ensign, a stunning dark blue, the other aren’t far behind with nice tight variegated/silvered foliage already showing nicely.
Autumn and winter flowering Cyclamen are looking great. The Cyclamen coum Cyberia series flower from now until April, showing short and dainty flowers and bud. There are still some attractive foliage on the silver leaved autumn flowering hederifolium types too. The Helleborus range is ready to roll as winter rolls on, not much bud yet but nice plants. The Euphorbias are looking good as well, they will retain a good show of foliage through the winter months before bursting into flower in early spring. Another evergreen early spring flowerer currently looking smart are the Bergenias in three varieties. Bright variegated leaves of the short tufted grass Carex Evergold are looking very neat and smart. Some of our spring bulbs are making a break for it, the Alliums are well up (3/pot) and the Scilla too. There are signs of movement from many more and if we can keep the mice and voles at bay we will add them to the list as soon as we can.
Wooden box returns
We have collected the majority of our wooden boxes up now but please do drop us a line if you would like us to pop in and collect any more up. We aren’t about quite as much now but you will be in our thoughts and on the list. Thanks.
Have a good week from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.
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