Lonely and Hairy

Morning all,
We're looking for a late September thrust on the potting front to get everything ready for next spring. Orders are slowing up a bit now, so time should be on our side, although this week didn't quite deliver the desired output with 8 team members off all week, for various reasons, and a couple more on odd days. Out of just over 20 people that is a big hole. We should have quite a few back next week so hoping to thrash on and get it done. It didn't help having a couple of extra distractions through the week with the temporary office arriving on Monday and the new one in kit form, arriving on several pallets on Wednesday. Space had to be made in the barn to accommodate all the wooden components to keep them dry ready for pre-construction treatment, which meant a bit of a clearout and reorganisation of stores in there. A very satisfying result in the end but still a distraction. The majority of prep work for construction will now go on hold for a couple of weeks but I'm really looking forward to sitting in a super insulated wooden cabin this winter, rather than watching the world go by through the holes in the wall in the current model. In theory the old one is insulated but with only about two inches of rather sketchy fibreglass and single glazed windows it's not going to win any efficiency prizes. One feature that we will keep is the overhanging beach hedge which we planted over 30 years ago. The branches have spread over most of the roof area providing fantastic cooling shade in the summer and should reduce the use of any air con cooling to virtually zero. We haven't had air con in the office for probably 10 years after the last one died, but we have a newish spare unit that came out of the lab work room last year and it will provide a cheaper heating source than the usual electric heaters (as long as we just set it up just to heat and are not tempted to cool as well).
The one gripe I have with heat pumps and air con units is that the lowest temperature setting is too high, many will not go below 16C which is no good if you just want frost protection overnight. Why heat to 16C when no one is there? Turn it off and you are risking freezing up, so in go extra thermostatic heaters to give you that protection, running less efficiently, but less often.
Apologies if anyone is trying to contact us by phone and finding us hard to get hold of, we are still having issues with our cordless handsets which we use any time when we are not in the office. Please do leave a message or email us and we will get back to you as soon as we are back in the office. Unfortunately we are only a small business and despite the rumours, I don't sit in here drinking coffee playing Candy-Crush all day, I do try to contribute elsewhere. Hopefully we will get another engineer out this week to try again to contact us with the outside world.

WOODEN BOX RETURNS
If anyone is ready to send back their collection of empty wooden boxes please do let us know. Over the next two or three weeks we would like to collect as many as we can, so we can get them out of your way and cleaned, dried and mended before the cold damp winter arrives. Thanks.

Availability highlights
Viola Konigin Charlotte traditionally flowers in the spring with its deep violet colour and stunning scent, but we find it does produce a pretty smattering in the late summer too and sure enough that is what's occurring now. Looking and smelling great. The late summer flowering Anemones are looking great in the gardens and we have some looking good now, some with bud coming. Anemones are always a tricky one as the natural tendency is for the plants to go tall. looks fab in the garden but not so easy in a pot. We have a fresh batch of compact and chunky Leucathemum Banana Creme with strong bud showing. Pretty little Tiarella are in bud and flower now. Fresh batches of Salvia Sensation blue are in bud and about to show colour.
We have a couple on fresh patches of Achillea in bud on short stems, the red Paprika and silver leaved Moonshine. Many of the Asters are in bud or flower. Fantastic plants of the mildew resistant Asmo are throwing up plenty of bud, compact and chunky, just beginning to open their pale lilac flowers. The massively popular Erigeron karvinskianus Stallone is sprouting plenty of flower buds, full of promise and dainty colours. If the weather is not too harsh we have had these still flowering at Christmas before now.
Foliage starts to be of interest at this time of year and there are some good shows of colour from the Brunnera variegata, Carex Evergold, Ajuga, Heuchera, Lamium and Euphorbia.
Have a good week from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.