Hairy Autumn

 Hi Everyone,

That was a fun packed week. The weather went from high summer to the depths of autumn in a few days, the sales were huge (for the time of year) and the nursery chores bowled along, all at the same time. I can't believe we got so much done in just one week.

I could see on the forecast that we had just a day and a half to try and get the tunnel sheets replaced in good conditions. Due to being surprisingly organised and prepared, we got 3 fixed on Monday and two on Tuesday morning, before the wind really got up. It was a bit of a gamble taking off the sheets in advance last week, but it paid off to everyone's relief, we made it by about an hour. We have just one to go now and that one needs a lot more preparation with replacement rotten wood, wind-up side curtain and a double sheeted cover to fit. It is the first time we will have our frost protected tunnel double skinned. The long life of the sheets and long term heat savings should cover the extra initial, cost fingers crossed. We are going to keep it inflated by fitting a tube to the next door tunnel skin (properly warm and led lit, propagation tunnel) which already has an inflated double skin. The same fan can then keep both inflated, as long as we have a good enough seal along all the sheet edges. Needing to make it a good fit, adds to the pressure on all sides!

The main potting season for the spring crops is drawing to a close, although not without its own drama. With about two days work to do the machine died again. The variable speed drive belt gave up, very worn and stretched it has had a good run, just a shame it wouldn't last another few days. Ordered up another one and got it fitted quick smart. Restarted the machine and a bar on the old stretched and slack conveyor lift chain caught, there was a big bang and a different drive chain snapped. Ace. That left us three chains to replace, the snapped little one and the two big lift chains. Spent all day with two of us in the machine, removing all the lift bars, cutting off the old chains and replacing with new. Frustrating at the time but a good job done in the end. Better to complete it all now rather than in the busy spring. Running like a new machine now, with everything tight and greased up it has lost all the clanking and wheezing of the past few months, that is unless I'm working on the team. Lots of planning going on at the moment, trying to organise a few winter projects to get the nursery running super smoothly in preparation for a hopefully very busy spring and summer 2021. Every year we seem to find another set of improvements to make to try and add even more efficiency to the production cycle. We have to try and squeeze that little bit extra out of the process each year. With labour rates up by over 7% since last winter, it is vital that we try to absorb as much of the extra cost as we can, especially as last year nearly the entire price rise we put in place, was spent on implementing the updated plant passport scheme. Good job this season has been such plain sailing!

Availability list highlights

Sorry if we are a bit short on colour, we would love to have had more available but sales over the last few weeks have been so much higher than usual at this time of year, that we have been slightly caught out!

Salvia nemerosa varieties are showing colour nicely. Particularly good this week are fresh plants showing colour of Blue Marvel and Compact Caradonna. Fresh batch of Scabious Butterfly Blue looking good with buds appearing. Ajuga's are still looking great, bold fresh foliage. Strong batch of Nepeta Walkers Low back on the list. As the time moves on we shift into Aster season. Only a few varieties left now. Healthy chunky stock most with buds showing. A new crop of Verbena Lollipop are ready, plenty of colour but not too big.

The ever popular Erigeron Stallone with bud on show but no colour showing just yet. In our garden they will often still be showing colour at Christmas. Fresh Helleborous are now on the list, ready to plant out now for a flower show this winter. We have niger and orientalis on the list now as well as a few of the larger argutifolius. Some bud showing on the niger already. Attractive foliage colour on our range of Heuchera. Young and fresh. Sedum Autumn Joy are in bud. Classic late summer flowering and so good for the bees, trimmed back earlier to produce nice short plants. Munstead Dark Red are nearly there too

A few Tiarella have pushed out another flush of flower, but very few plants in stock. More in the spring. The sharp sighted among you might spot the Cyclamen hederifolium on the list this week. We had trouble getting the young plants this summer so we only have very limited numbers available so please don't order too many, we will probably have to restrict supply to make it fair for all. We have the longer flowering little Cyclamen coum very soon, which flowers all winter and into the spring, although only available this year in a mixed colour range and again in limited numbers.

Take care out there, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

Hairy and Windy

Hi Everyone,

Not everything goes according to plan does it. Although the weather was bright and warm as expected, the main task of the week was abandoned when my polytunnel covers didn't get here until Wednesday, coinciding with a massive pick up in wind speeds. We've had our windiest days of the month so far, since their arrival, good for the turbines but not so good for my plans to re-sheet. Also on Wednesday, to add insult to injury the potting machine died again. It has been worked pretty hard this summer so we have to expect some gremlins to make an appearance every now and then, The variable speed belt gave up so we lost all drive and added a rather rubbery aroma to the air. Managed to track down a replacement after several hours on line and missed the delivery slot for 'next day, by a couple of minutes. An offer of midday delivery today would get us set up for a good start to next week, but the carrier said we weren't in when they tried to deliver (I haven't been out for weeks!), so we now won't get it until Monday. Ace.

Anyway, every cloud has a silver lining and all that, and we ended up getting stuck into the nursery drainage recovery project and that went brilliantly. Several blocked channel drains and silt traps were cleared out and the first section of the gravel filled drainage ditch was emptied, relined and refilled. We enlarged the ditch and used a tough but more permeable fabric than before, which should keep the silt from clogging everything up, and let the water through more quickly, making it better able to cope with those torrential downpours we seem to be experiencing more of. We used my new trommel (rotating sieve) to clean the gravel so we could reuse it and I must say it worked a treat. A very worthwhile and satisfying purchase.

As we get towards the end of the season I can safely report that we are going to be fine for next year. Ongoing record hairy pot sales throughout the summer and super efficient hard work from everyone concerned, has pulled us out of the pickle we found ourselves in a few months ago. Luckily for us the lockdown plant giveaway scheme kick started the recovery, giving us a chance to clear out, re-pot and trade right through the summer period. The microprop lab is going to take a bit longer to get back on its feet because of the massive loss of sales and breakdown in the production program, but given a few more months we can get it back on track.

We saw the new bank manager last week who was delighted with our recovery efforts and very supportive in both word and deed. He was a bit over excited as we were his first site visit since lockdown. As a result the necessary finance is assured for the winter and we can almost relax. I received some sage advice from my very old friend Roger who popped in this week to catch up on our news, 'don't spend it all'! Sadly it was too late, I had just ordered 10 brand new wheelbarrows in an extravagant flourish. Hopefully there will be enough now to reduce the number that go 'walkabout' when they are in high demand. Autumn and winter is our wheelbarrow season, we never seem to have enough.

I hope you are all feeling as relieved as we are with the recovery in our market, we are luckier than many.

Availability list highlights

Salvia nemerosa varieties are showing colour nicely. Particularly good this week are fresh plants showing colour of Blue Marvel and Compact Caradonna. Fresh batches of Scabious Mariposa looking good with buds on show. Ajuga's are still looking great, bold fresh foliage. Persicaria Inverleith are strong and compact, in bud and showing colour. Darjeeling Red have bud and colour too. Strong batch of Nepeta Junior Walker now in bud and showing a little colour. A properly compact form of catmint.

As the time moves on we shift into Aster season. We have a great range of healthy chunky stock at the moment and the buds are now showing but numbers are dwindling fast. A new crop of Verbena Lollipop and rigida are ready, plenty of colour but not too big. Squeezed on a couple of our most popular lines through the year, Erysimum Bowles Mauve onto the list this week as well as Erigeron Stallone. Both have tight bud showing.

Fresh Helleborous are now on the list, ready to plant out now for a flower show this winter. We have the first few niger and orientalis on the list now as well as some of the larger ones, foetidus and argutifolius. Attractive foliage colour on our range of Heuchera. Young and fresh. Sedum Autumn Joy are in bud. Classic late summer flowering and so good for the bees, trimmed back earlier to produce nice short plants. Munstead Dark Red are nearly there. 

Take care out there, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hairy and Woolly

Hi Everyone,

Here comes that September blast of summer again. We so often get a little late weather bonus and hopefully it will encourage everyone into their gardens again. Certainly down here in the south we have had a very pleasant weather window, once the downpours earlier ceased. We even recovered one of the polytunnels this week. We would have done more if the chap in charge had got the sheets ordered early enough! Fingers crossed they will be here on Monday as it looks like Monday and Tuesday could be good covering days with sunshine and high temperatures. There's nothing quite like a warm supple sheet to get a nice taught finish. We have uncovered and prepared a couple more tunnels in anticipation I just hope I've not been getting a bit too much ahead of myself. Tunnel cover production has got pretty sophisticated over recent years. We have lashed out on one sheet in this batch, for one of our heated propagation tunnels, which has 8 different layers in its construction which makes it really good at retaining heat. In combination with another clear sheet underneath it, kept apart by inflating the gap with a little fan, we should be super heat efficient and have a cover that lasts at least 8 years. Putting on one sheet can be a challenge at times, so putting two on at the same time does add a little extra to the excitement, especially when you have to get both slightly slack to allow room for inflation but not too loose that they balloon to far apart, plus you have to get a near perfect seal all around the edge to ensure it stays inflated. We have only done this twice before so I'm just hoping the memories of quite how we did it come flooding back. As usual we will make it up as we go.

Potting is slowing up a bit now as we begin to see the light at the end of the polytunnel. We have a couple of days worth of compost left in this load and then we have 10 bulk bags of a trial compost to test out it's overwintering performance. It is a mix we tried it out on a small scale in January and it performed remarkably well. It was a bit of a wild card, a mix of mostly wool and bracken and the ingredients are all UK produced. Rather scarily it doesn't have any added slow release fertiliser so I was pretty sceptical that it would cope with some of our hungrier or longer term crops. I still have most of the plants here in the trial, other than a few that got snaffled into a landscapers collection, and they have all done really well. There is no sign of nutritional stress despite the planting of some pretty vigorous plants. The wool (you really can't see it in the mix) is supposed to (and does seem to) reduce the water demand which could be a very useful characteristic. We also seem to have less liverwort growth on the compost surface but that could just be a fluke, we will have to judge it in the larger trial. Quite excited by it, as it is a bit of a radical mix, but a move away from added slow release fertilisers would be great and using more local ingredients is potentially more sustainable. It is a bit pricey but if the benefits are good enough I would love to give it a real go at some point.

Availability list highlights

Salvia nemerosa varieties are showing colour nicely. Particularly good this week are fresh plants showing colour of Pink Marvel and Blue Marvel too. They carry bigger flowers than most other varieties and good strong colour. Don't miss them I don't think they will hang around long. Fresh batches of Scabious Mariposa looking good with buds appearing. Ajuga's are still looking great, bold fresh foliage and a few buds coming too. Persicaria Inverleith are strong and compact, in bud and showing some colour. Darjeeling Red have bud and colour too. Strong batch of Nepeta Junior Walker now in bud and showing a little colour. A properly compact form of catmint. New batches of Salvia Amethyst Lips and Hot Lips are in bud and flower again but only a few left.

As the time moves on we shift into Aster season. We have a great range of healthy chunky stock at the moment and the buds are now showing but numbers are dwindling fast. A new crop of Verbena Lollipop and rigida are ready, plenty of colour but not too big. Fresh Helleborous are now on the list, ready to plant out now for a flower show this winter. We have the first few niger and orientalis on the list now as well as some strong chunky foetidus and argutifolius.

Short and bushy Penstemon Garnet are showing bud now. A late potting that looks full of promise. Sour Grapes looking good too although I can't see bud yet. Attractive foliage colour on our range of Heuchera. Young and fresh. Sedum Autumn Joy are in bud. Classic late summer flowering and so good for the bees, trimmed back earlier to produce nice short plants

Take care out there, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hairy Outing

 Hi Everyone,

A bit early, I feel, for the dip in temperatures, but at least it seems a bit more settled and a bit less damp in the local forecast for the next week or so. No signs of an Indian summer so far which would have been handy for plant growth and sales, but it still might happen. To be fair sales are still bowling along so we are not complaining.

I daren't say we have nearly caught up with the nursery work, because it blatantly isn't true, but we are getting there. The backlog of potting is miles shorter and the number of tunnels to be cleared dwindling rapidly. I have even got to the point of thinking what site improvements we can get stuck into in the next couple of months. Rescuing and improving the drainage system will be a priority, as well as recovering those tunnels that have split their covers over the summer. We might even get time to do this before the cold really sets in, which would be a joy because the sheets go on so much tighter if warmed up a bit in some early autumn sunshine.

This will be the first 'no potting Saturday' for ages, and a chance for a short lie in before another session of label printing. Another week or two and the wooden label stock levels will be back up to 'normal' which will hopefully result in fewer calls for emergency print runs during the despatch process, we can then relax a bit more as the seasons pressures gradually reside. Managed a trip to the local agricultural store for some chicken food last weekend, my first trip out in a mask, very exciting. Hardly anyone there, so fairly relaxed, but just not wanting to touch anything. Not quite what it used to be and no real end in sight. We are very lucky to have been allowed to bounce back so quickly, there are so many who are still scuppered by it all. I can't think when our modern jive sessions will start up again and I do miss them. It was something that dragged me off the nursery each week and forced me to think of something else for a while. With a brain as small as mine, it doesn't take much these days to fill it and trying to remember the moves you have just been taught is tough enough, let alone adding in those you did last week. Brain overload every time, but a lovely crowd to dance with and have a catch up. However you couldn't pick a much worse pastime for social distancing, lots of different partners, close personal contact, heavy breathing and all the rest, and that's before you start dancing! One day we be back, no matter how alien that type of behaviour seems at this time. Collecting new sofa and chairs tomorrow will be the weekend highlight. The current set are shot and completely threadbare and the offer of an old 1930's suite was too tempting to refuse. We have only seen a couple of snaps of the chairs and nothing of the sofa but they look entertaining. Quite small seats but huge roll-over arms and big fat backs, they look very 30's, if not very space efficient! The covers look like they have seen a lot of life and all it could throw at them, but a few drapes will disguise that out until we have tested them out and decided whether to go for the full reupholstering (might have to take it up as a new hobby).

Availability list highlights

Salvia nemerosa varieties are all budding up nicely. Particularly good this week are fresh plants showing colour of Pink Marvel and Blue Marvel too. They carry bigger flowers than most other varieties and good strong colour. Don't miss them I don't think they will hang around long. Fresh batches of Scabious Mariposa looking good with buds appearing. Ajuga's are looking great, bold fresh foliage and a few buds coming too. New on for this week are a fresh batch of chunky strong Liriope muscari which are producing a few flower stems now. Persicaria Inverleith are in bud and showing some colour. Darjeeling Red have bud too.

Strong batch of Nepeta Junior Walker now in bud and showing a little colour. A properly compact form of catmint. New batches of Salvia Amethyst Lips and Hot Lips are in bud and flower again. As the summer moves on we shift into Aster season. We have a great range of healthy chunky stock at the moment and the buds are now showing. A new crop of Verbena Lollipop are ready, plenty of colour but not too big.

Tradescantia Blue and Gold still going strong, buds still popping up, just a few left. Fresh Helleborous are now on the list, ready to plant out now for a flower show this winter. We have the first few niger and orientalis on the list now as well as some strong chunky foetidus and argutifolius. Short and bushy Penstemon Garnet are showing bud now. A late potting that looks full of promise. Sour Grapes looking good too although I can't see bud yet. Attractive foliage colour on our range of Heuchera. Young and fresh. Sedum Autumn Joy are in bud. Classic late summer flowering and so good for the bees, trimmed back earlier to produce nice short plants

Take care out there, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.