Hairy holidays

Hi Everyone,
All that heat seems like a distant memory today as the official restarting of the holiday season gets underway. After the chaos on the beaches in the sunshine a short while ago, I suspect a damp, cool and breezy weekend is actually the perfect start for most of those in charge if not for those lucky enough to get away. It should allow everyone to get the hang of things before any huge waves of enthusiasm threaten to overcome all the new arrangements. The press don't exactly help with all the talk of Super Saturday, whipping up the excitement levels when most of us I suspect just want to be sensible and keep safe. It's great that things are opening up again but we will still have to cope with living with the virus for a long while yet I suspect. Any thought of a holiday is a little way off for us just yet, 7 days a week in the relatively safe environment of the nursery is just fine with us. It's a long haul back to recovery and our time has to be spent getting things as right as we can make them for the next few months, to ensure things all hold together. The sales chaos of the last few weeks which resulted in such big stock shortages is showing some signs of easing, although it is all still a bit hand to mouth (with gloves on). The range of perennials has expanded slightly this week and I'm hoping it will continue to do so and joy of joy I have been able to put a herb list together for the first time for several weeks. The herbs stocks are still pretty restricted in range and numbers for some lines so there will still need to be a bit of flexibility in the system  but we do have some good numbers now of some of the most popular mints, parsley, sage, coriander, basil etc. We will just have to see how it goes, but with herb demand being so spectacularly high I just don't know quite how it will play out. We will continue to offer the option of us putting together a herb mix for you, as this seems to have gone down quite well with many customers and it does ensure you get the best mix we have to offer at that moment. We got back to some serious potting this week despite the continuing high sales demand. I am hoping to catch up even more this week as I know we have a couple more big module deliveries on the way and we need to be prepared for those. It's all go! I ordered all the spring bulbs last week and checked up on the continuing supply of the coir pots from our village in Sri Lanka. It has been such a rollercoaster over the last few months and in the early days, when we feared the worst, I did have to warn the importer that we may have to reduce our order for the rest of the year. This did cause some consternation both here and in Sri Lanka, because we are the main outlet for this small village unit and it would have made a big hole in their finances. Luckily it quite quickly became apparent that we were going to shift a lot of pots off site through the big plant giveaway, which took away the production blockage and allowed us to get back into full swing. In fact by the time we add the plants given away to the plants sold and those potted for summer sale, we will have used more pots than ever this year, so we definitely will need all three loads. This was great news for all but still left the worry of how the virus could affect potentially affect the villagers, the worker attendance over there, and possibly delay delivery. Luckily the production process is quite long, we always place the orders a year or so in advance and make sure we have plenty in stock here too, so we knew we had a little bit of leeway. We feared the worst with a less developed country, but in fact they coped with it all really well with low infection and death rates in the country as a whole and there was just a 3 week factory/barn shutdown. Our first load was already completed before the close down and that came in a couple of weeks ago, the next load should be here at the end of this month and the last comes in October, ready for some late autumn potting and to hold in store for the spring rush. Relief all round after all that excitement.
Availability list highlights
We will all have to continue to be a bit more flexible than usual if we are to get all the stock delivered over the coming weeks, but as always we will be doing our best, most of the time it seems to be working ok, bar the very occasional brain freeze on my part. Main current highlights on the flowering stock front are; Osteospermum Tresco Purple are back on the list again, hopefully enough for several more weeks! There are more batches on the way for these beauties too. The Salvia Hot Lips and Amythyst Lips are back in numbers this week! Buds are appearing now, despite my extra trimming to get super bushy plants. Summer flowering Gaura are coming along nicely with buds on show and colour very close. Fresh batches of Salvia nemerosa varieties are on the list. Buds showing but only small numbers available. Couldn't get any more stock! Red/purple foliage of Lysmachia Firecracker nicely on show with short bushy plants. Only have a few. Fresh Helleborous foetidus on the list, ready to plant out now for a flower show this winter. Other Helleborous to follow shortly.
Take care out there, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.