Hairy DIY

Hi Everyone,

Labels, labels, labels. So much background stuff going on in our efforts to be super ready for a busy spring, with labels this week being top of the list. I got my massive colour label order in nice and early this autumn thinking that was most of the hard work done on that front, but no, I forgot the next job of proof-reading the new ones that follows on. Not only that but because of the new plant passport formats being introduced, I have to proof-read the entire range! At least it is now a job I can do online and ask for any changes very easily on the screen. I made a start on Wednesday and quickly blew up the few remaining brain cells I have left, after seeing the scale of the job. One of the issues is that I like to make the most of opportunities and improve stuff whenever we can, and when I see a space on a label I want to fill it with extra useful info for the ultimate consumer. The number of these opportunities was bigger than I had realised, so I removed the toys from the pram and gave up. I contacted the label maker to see if they could adjust and expand the content for me, which they said they could do, but it would result in a significant delay in the timing of the delivery. Ouch. So after a quick discussion, I came to terms with the fact that if we wanted it done we had to do the additional work ourselves and get it done fairly snappily, so production didn't get delayed. Once that decision was made it actually helped me mentally. The realisation that if we wanted to make the best of the labels, we just had to bite the bullet and get on with it, all the doubt and angst was taken out of the equation and revitalised those last few remaining brain cells. The result is that most other work has gone on hold for a few days, while we battle through the mire. Luckily Boris has helped out a bit by sticking the whole of Hampshire into Tier 2 and scuppering the short break with friends to sunny St Ives we had booked for the end of Lockdown2. That has given us several extra free days to sort things out and I can't say I was that surprised. With the vaccines on the way there is plenty of light at the end of the tunnel, we just have to be extra careful until then, all sensible stuff really.

All the above fun will delay the production of our 2021 online catalogue, but I will endeavour to get a summary one out very soon, just so you can see all the latest stuff, new varieties and prices for the coming season. There will be a modest price rise of approx 2.5% (5p per pot) which technically won't cover the many cost increases incurred over the year (7% wage increase to mention just one), but with the increased consumer demand and site investments helping our efficiency and reducing waste, we should be ok. I know there could well be challenges with stock shortages across the trade again in the coming season, bearing in mind the extra consumer demand, centres being open during the peak season, Brexit challenges, recovery from disrupted nursery production and potential propagation limitations. In theory the law of supply and demand could allow us to increase by a lot more, and I know some suppliers have spotted an opportunity to do this, but we are in this for the long haul and we would rather be fair than opportunistic with our customers and steer a steadier course. If this doesn't work we may have to adjust prices more next year, but I am ever hopeful it will all be ok in the end.

In my 'spare time' I have been researching 'click presses' which I never even knew existed before this week. I am looking at pressing out our own labels and possibly the header boards, with die cutters so that we can take advantage of printing all our marketing POS on completely plastic free materials. Most of our POS is already plastic free, but an annoying and stubborn last few bits remain. Current suppliers are not in a position to do it for us at the moment, yet the materials are out there to use. The problem seems to be that there isn't yet enough demand for them to try very hard to change their production set up, to supply us. Anyway it all looks quite promising and I'm hoping to make a few more small investments to kick off some trials to see if we can make it work. I can already see some more opportunities for efficiency savings in the future coming out of this, in both materials and labour use, but it is very early days and I am pretty used to grand ideas falling down, so don't hold your breath.

There may be a theme appearing in this missive. If a jobs worth doing, do it yourself. 

Availability list highlights

A nice range of Helleborous are now on the list, ready to plant out now for a flower show this winter. We have sold out of a couple of lines already but still have some great niger and orientalis on the list with some bud showing on the niger.

We have the longer flowering little Cyclamen coum available now as well. Only a few ready at the moment but they will flower all winter and into the spring. Only available this year in a mixed colour range and only in limited numbers. Ajuga's are still looking great, bold fresh foliage.

We have a nice range of the evergreen Bergenia's in stock. Watch out for the more unusual Dumbo which as it matures produces really big fleshy and rather hairy leaves, but this is a actually deciduous variety.

The ever popular Erigeron Stallone with bud on show and the odd open flower. They will often still be in colour at Christmas. Attractive foliage colour on our range of Heuchera. Young and fresh. Those were the days.

Take care out there, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

Hairy labels

Hi Everyone,

Considering this is supposed to be the quiet time of the year, we are madly busy, the time just flies by. Not so much on the orders front, although we do have some lovely Helleborus, including some of the niger varieties with flower and bud, a few little hardy Cyclamen in flower and some evergreens still looking smart. With the lack of really cold weather even quite a few of the herbs are looking pretty fresh too. Anyway I'm not particularly looking to sell much at this time of year, this is the time for all the spring preparations. Another two tunnels had their drains installed last week, despatch had a curtain vent replaced and lots of bark mulch got laid to get those weeds under control around the tunnel edges, We managed a few hours potting on one of the chillier damp days, just to get a few freshly lifted strawberries potted, a chance to try out our new little IR heaters in a real world situation. They worked perfectly, not too hot but a lot more comfortable. At only 600W each and with them all individually controlled by thermostat and motion detectors, they hardly made a dent on the electric consumption for the day (yes, I record the meter reading every morning!), plus it was windy enough to be covered by the turbines, so happy people all round. I wonder if the potting tunnel and despatch area will suddenly become a much more attractive places to work now! I know it's not exactly world shattering high tech stuff, but for us this whole development is quite a radical change. The team working on the nursery have never had the luxury of heat before, other than in the staff rooms at break-time and in the loos. It was a nuts amount to install, but the running costs should be easily manageable and hopefully a more comfortable work environment will help boost both morale and output, we'll see.

I am currently fine tuning the pot label designs for next season. The colour labels all need updating, by Floramedia, with the new UK plant passport info and we have quite a few new varieties added too. Our own herb printing plates will all need to be remade to include the new format, so I have started on the graphics to change all those, that's going to take quite a few days even before I start etching the plates and start the printing itself. On the bright side we have started the process a few weeks earlier than last year, so it shouldn't be quite so much of a panic this time. I am still waiting to hear from our plant health inspector to see if we will be give some leeway to use up the EU style label stock within the UK, or if we will have to over stick them (again), the decision hasn't been made yet as far as they know.

We now are set up with an import/export agent account, but the VAT deferment account application is still ongoing. We are making ground, even if we are still not really quite sure what is going on! Now the plants and labels for the spring are organised I was able to turn my efforts this week to trying to remove the last of the plastic ingredients from our marketing package. We have been pushing our suppliers for ages, for non-plastic replacements of the header board sticky labels, the header board waterproofing coating and the sheets of blank pot labels that we print ourselves for those small batches of plants which don't have a Floramedia label. It didn't go very well, the brakes have been applied to quite a few projects due to the covid disruption, so I'm having a rethink on how we do these things. I can get hold of A4 sheets of the Floramedia B500 label material, and I can print directly onto these through our OKI printer, but I can't get them pre-cut so that they pop out of the sheet after printing. I trialled the B500 card in a tray all last winter, spring and summer, mocked up as a header board and it lasted really well, so there may be an opportunity there to redesign that part and print directly onto the board, rather than onto a sticky label first. This has led to a major trawl of the internet into the realms of die cutting, of which I knew nothing about. Live and learn.

Oh yes, I blew the budget on a new/replacement van this week. The same design as last year's new Fiat, which has a bigger payload than the Peugeot we are replacing, and is so easy to load. Sadly the electric version only has a short range, as well as being more than twice the price, but perhaps next time. Delivery won't be until the spring, but looking forward to its arrival already, when hopefully a lot more other stuff will be returning to closer to normal.

Availability list highlights

A nice range of Helleborous are now on the list, ready to plant out now for a flower show this winter. We have sold out of a couple of lines already but still have some great niger and orientalis on the list with some bud showing on the niger. Ajuga's are still looking great, bold fresh foliage.

We have a nice range of the evergreen Bergenia's in stock. Watch out for the more unusual Dumbo which as it matures produces really big fleshy and rather hairy leaves, but this is a actually deciduous variety. The ever popular Erigeron Stallone with bud on show and the odd open flower. They will often still be in colour at Christmas. Attractive foliage colour on our range of Heuchera. Young and fresh. Those were the days.

We have the longer flowering little Cyclamen coum available now as well. Only a few ready at the moment but they will flower all winter and into the spring. Only available this year in a mixed colour range and only in limited numbers. 

Take care out there, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

Hairy Prep

 Hi Everyone,

An excellent week on the winter prep of lots of plants out there and still bowling along on the site projects. The weather was with for most of the week, so there is just the Frankenstein tunnel to recover now, which will have to wait until we have installed the new lab store. Everything else is covered and dry ready to keep the worst of the weather off the crops over the winter. We are going to have to remove a door lintel to slide the new lab store (refitted shipping container) into position as it is frustratingly about a foot too tall to get under the door frame, then we can get the new cover on. Not a mistake this time, it was all in the master plan, honest. Both twin skin tunnels are now inflated and the fan on only half the time. Result.

This is the time of year when I try to find the time to decide on what plants to grow for next year, how many and how to schedule them. With over 600 varieties and multiple deliveries of each, it is a mind bending task that needs a lot of thinking about. That then leads into sorting out the perennial colour label order so that the printers (Floramedia) have time to get it all sorted by the start of the new season. They have to secure the starch waterproofed card for the job, which is still only made in quite small batches. Having our holiday cut short has helped hugely and I am a week or two ahead of last year, which will hopefully bode well for having everything in place, although you just never know what is round the corner.

Once these key orders are finalised I can get on with updating the online catalogue for 2021. I know it's all a bit late in the year but we'll get there. There are quite a few new varieties on the perennial side of things as well as bigger volumes to contend with, 2021 looks like an exciting year for us as we try to guess how things will go.

Early indications on demand for next season are looking like we will need all that extra stock, we are already turning away potential new customers who are just too far away for us to sustainably service and deliver to. In the past when sales have been tougher we have spread our net a little wider than we would have liked, but we are never 100% comfortable with that approach as we know it is so much more difficult to maintain our levels of service, achieve sensibly quick box returns, keep delivery costs down and keep that carbon footprint as small as we can.

It looks pretty chaotic on the plant importation front at the moment. There are lots of helpful adverts from the government urging us to get ready, but we are having a really difficult time tying down exactly what we need to do. Luckily many of our young plant suppliers have a UK nursery base to distribute from, which means we avoid a lot of the hassle of any VAT deferment payments, paperwork, phytosanitary certificates etc. It will all come at a cost to us eventually and there will still be some imports where we have to do all or part of it ourselves. We are on the way with setting up an import agent and getting a VAT deferment account in place, although the forms are pretty daunting and the time lag is quite long before anything seems to happen. It's been three weeks since the deferment account form went in and nothing back yet. It also looks like we are going to have to set up with a multiple number of agents as many importers seem to be arranging agents themselves, so that they are sure their entire load has everything in place before it passes through the docks. Luckily we don't have any plants coming in very early in the year so hopefully many of the wrinkles will be ironed out by the time they are due in.

That's not the end of the extra hassle, when the plants arrive here we now have to seal the plants off from all other stock so that the Plant Health Inspectors can come and clear them for use. We can only do this if we have declared ourselves a Point of Destination and registered the import on the Peach government website in advance of its arrival. The form for registering as a POD needs the deferment account details, so we are currently marginally stuffed on that application too! Still no EU trade agreement sorted either so that helps add to the pile of unknowns. Fingers crossed all the plants I ordered will arrive. 

Wooden box returns

We have visited most of you now and collecting up our wooden boxes as this crazy season slows up for the autumn andmwinter. If you still have boxes needing collection please do drop me a line and we will try and get to you. We may not pick up every last box by the end of autumn, just as long as we have most of them.

Availability list highlights

A nice range of Helleborous are now on the list, ready to plant out now for a flower show this winter. We have sold out of a couple of lines already but still have some great niger and orientalis on the list with some bud showing on the niger. Ajuga's are still looking great, bold fresh foliage.

We have a nice range of the evergreen Bergenia's in stock. Watch out for the more unusual Dumbo which as it matures produces really big fleshy and rather hairy leaves, but this is a actually deciduous variety.

The ever popular Erigeron Stallone with bud on show and the odd open flower. They will often still be in colour at Christmas. Attractive foliage colour on our range of Heuchera. Young and fresh. Those were the days.

We have the longer flowering little Cyclamen coum available now as well. Only a few ready at the moment but they will flower all winter and into the spring. 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 breaks

 Hi Everyone,

That was a hectic couple of weeks at this end. Electricians fixing up all the new heating and lighting kit in despatch and the potting tunnel, among lots of other site activity, digging trenches, mending machines and some unexpected extras. Two weeks ago activity was intensified as Caroline and I prepared to go on our annual holiday to sunny Cornwall. Getting everything lined up for a break always takes longer than expected and this time was no different. It didn't help that three more tunnels split their covers as the temperature fell away and I had to order some replacements. Packing for the break itself got a bit rushed in the end and despite copious lists we still managed to forget most of the food for the couple of eat-in meals planned early in the break. Not a problem really as not only did Cornwall have plenty of veg on offer, but we were home by Wednesday anyway, after the lockdown announcement caught us out. A bit of a disappointment after such a hectic year, we were looking forward to a change of scene and pace, but we still packed in plenty of treats over the few days we were there, so it really does feel like we have had a break. Assuming things relax in December we are going to try again, fingers crossed. 

Coming back so quickly I thought everything would be pretty much the same, but as usual everyone seems to get on better when I'm not here and lots of jobs have either been finished or are well under way. The lovely weather helped I think. Several orders got delivered and we picked up most of the remainder of our wooden boxes, the electricians have all but finished, two tunnels were recovered with the third ready to roll. The upgrading of the Frankenstein tunnel (don't ask) to an all slab floor is nearly complete and its side curtain vent and netting removed, re-timbered and replaced. Anyone visiting the nursery will be pleased to hear that we have put up new tunnel location signs on all the tunnels, inside and out, so you (and we) can find the plants more easily. Over time the signs gradually disappear and it's only when you are standing in a tunnel and think, 'where am I?', which is happening a lot now, that you realise you can't tell. One tunnel looks like another from the inside. All in all a very productive week.

Still lots of winter projects to do though, and next week looks promising with a mild dryish few days coming up. Excitingly (it doesn't take much) I fitted the connecting pipe this morning between the existing twin skinned prop tunnel and the new twin skin cover on the frost protected tunnel. The little fan we have should in theory have enough puff to inflate both, providing there are not too many leaks round the edges, time will tell. We can stick up a few leaks easily enough but just need to be careful not to do too good a job in case a cover goes pop! Hoping to make a start on remaking all the herb printing plates with the new UK plant passport details on it, replacing all the new plates I made last year for the new EU scheme! Once made I can gt started on printing a good stock of labels ready for the spring rush. It's all go.

Natural Energy are coming in to do our annual wind turbine service this week if it's not too windy. We've had a good year on output so far, the best yet, although there is still time for a lull in the weather to knock it back, you just never know. December and January are on average the windiest months so it doesn't take many still days to upset the average and fall behind. As we add more electric equipment on the site I keep thinking consumption will go up but we are currently on our lowest annual usage since starting accurate recording in 2008 (over 40% lower than then). The new despatch heaters will definitely increase consumption in 2021, but it will be cheap energy as we are producing most of it ourselves and the improvement in working conditions should be well worth it.

Wooden box returns

We have visited most of you now and collecting up our wooden boxes as this crazy season slows up for the autumn and winter. The barn is full of cleaned, repaired and mostly dried trays all ready for 2021 sales to get going again. If you still have boxes needing collection please do drop me a line and we will try and get to you. We may not pick up every last box by the end of autumn, just as long as we have most of them.

Availability list highlights

A nice range of Helleborous are now on the list, ready to plant out now for a flower show this winter. We have sold out of a couple of lines already but still have some great niger and orientalis on the list with some bud showing on the niger already. Ajuga's are still looking great, bold fresh foliage.

We have a nice range of the evergreen Bergenia's in stock. Watch out for the more unusual Dumbo which as it matures produces really big fleshy and rather hairy leaves, but this is a actually deciduous variety. As the time moves on we are well into Aster season. Only a few varieties left now.

The ever popular Erigeron Stallone with bud on show and the odd open flower. They will often still be in colour at Christmas. Attractive foliage colour on our range of Heuchera. Young and fresh. Those were the days.

We have the longer flowering little Cyclamen coum available now as well. Only a few ready at the moment but they will flower all winter and into the spring. Only available this year in a mixed colour range and again in limited numbers.

Take care out there, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries