Hairy preserve

Morning all,

Balmy sunshine today just glorious. It was on the cards on Thursday, so we rushed to prepare our Frankenstein tunnel (built from the salvaged remains of a tunnel that blew down in the 1986 hurricane!) for a new skin, after the tunnel end was dismantled to get the new lab container store into position. The store (due in December) arrived on Tuesday and got left outside the tunnel, which is to be its new home. It was too tall to get through the doors but luckily (good management) was narrow enough (by 10cm) to get between the uprights. We removed the doors and lintel and using a combination of pump trucks and the fork lift, skated it into position. It fitted in beautifully and will be put to full use over the weekend. Greg rebuilt the doorframe and we stripped off the very old split cover, in anticipation of a still, warm and bright day today.

Like all good plans the day went really well, with two potting machine breakdowns, a lost plug extractor board, and several people off for the day! This all delayed the start of the re-covering by several hours but we couldn't afford to miss the glorious weather window, so with the help of a few heroic staff delaying their weekend by a couple of hours, we got it on. That just leaves me the weekend to finish off the trimming and fitting of the corners, and come Monday morning we will have a fully freshened store tunnel. Quite a relief. Definitely suffered Pre-Tunnel-Covering Tension most of the day, it's our most difficult one to cover and I'm so glad it's off the to-do list.

The weather has woken everyone up to the wonders of plant buying again and sales took off this week. Looks like there are plenty more to come which is fantastic, but scary, at the same time. The public's new love affair with gardening doesn't look to have diminished since last summer which is very exciting for all in the trade, a bit of warmth this week has got them coming out of hibernation and looking forward to the spring. We will be doing the best we can to satisfy demand, but we are still taking each week as it comes and doing a certain amount of flying by the seat of our pants. There is loads of fresh stock on the way over the season, much more than even last year, which was 25% up on volume, but we are still suffering from shortages following on from last summers excitement. This will mean some early range and volume shortages especially in the herbs which again are selling at record levels. We are responding to the extra demand but it will take a little while to catch up again, we need some good growing weather and a little time.

We had a new van due in next week to cope with all the extra work, but like all good plans of mine this one didn't quite fall into place either. The design is the same as last year's Fiat which we are really pleased with, but a combination of Brexit delays and Covid disruption has caused a delay until the end of March. It's not the end of the world as luckily I decided not to sell the older Peugeot over the winter preferring the security of having that extra backup (and I didn't get offered much for it!).

We've been treating our wooden boxes to a new coat of water repellent preservative to try and extend their working life and improve clean up times, I'm trying it too! Over 7,000 boxes took a hell of a long time, but we finished this week, much to the painting teams relief. Just hoping it makes a positive difference in box turn-round times at this end. With the high demand we are going to be tight on boxes this year, I suspect, I have a new load of boxes on order, but at twice the price we were paying two years ago, so we really need to make the best of what we already have. The printing and construction of the boxes was so expensive I have decided that we will do that bit ourselves, we have the printing kit and nail gun so it should be just matter of finding the time. It will save us a bit and give us a bit more flexibility.

Availability list highlights

Spring time is here and quite a few of the early spring bulbs are thrusting forth. We have lovely bud and colour on many varieties now. Our Fritillaria (snakes head lily) are looking green and chunky with more and more bud being produced already.

Some of our short Narcissus varieties are now in bud and some showing colour, short and stocky and full of spring promise. This includes the pretty dainty Hoop Narcissus (Narcissus bulbocodium Conspicuus) which are now in bud.

We have a few wood anemone (Anemone nemerosa) emerging and showing the odd bud, a woodland beauty. We still have some great Helleborous niger and orientalis on the nursery.

We have a nice range of the evergreen Bergenia's in stock all propagated in our microprop lab, I can see the centre buds swelling ready to produce flower stems, so it won't be long before they do their thing.

Pulmonaria's are budding up now with some colour showing on the Blue Ensign and lovely tight bold foliage on the other two.

I have two Scabiosa in bud, looking strong, and in the mild temperatures last week there was even the odd opening flower. I suspect with the eastern blast will have dented that rash gesture, but it just shows how close we are to some serious flowering activity. This early in the year their blue colouring definitely has a rosy hue, but colour is colour!

Take care out there, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries