Hairy irrigation

Morning,

Hope all is well. Nice to be a bit of sunshine and some cool winter temperatures. Although it is much easier to get stuff done in the warmth, I always get a bit nervous at this time of year that if it's too warm now we will pay for it later. Much better to get the cold out of the way early. Not a lot we can do about it, but it's comforting to have a belief system, no matter how nuts, lurking in the background.

Still very early in the year but we are back into exciting stuff already. The updated printing screens for the wooden POS boards arrived on Tuesday, just in time to get a few printed off to go with most of this week's orders. It was all a bit hand to mouth with liberal splashes of permanent black ink decorating the surroundings, but the combination of new screens, new ink and kind weather worked pretty well and we got there in the end. You may notice that we have changed the mounting arrangement for the larger boards so they are now screwed to a box base only, without the wooden box sides. This makes them a bit more versatile in what you can do with them, they should be easier to hang or screw to a display area or bench. It also saves on a few resources at this end and with timber prices the way they are we are going to need to hold onto all the savings we can make. Once the boards are all done we can finish off the box making which will complete this winters investment in new box stock (3,500 boxes at £10 a pop, ouch!),

For the last 4 winters we have been preparing the nursery for rainwater harvesting. We have hand dug over 1.5km of french drains between all the tunnels (too restricted to get a machine in there), initially with the intention of reducing the flash flooding we were regularly experiencing on the production beds inside the tunnels, but with the hope that we could start harvesting the output to use in the irrigation system. This week I had a chap out to give us some advice on the next step in the process, and what a revelation it was! It was one of those rare occasions when someone comes up with a series of practical, sensible and economic ideas that fitted perfectly with where we are at the moment. I was envisaging sumps, filter beds, a banked and fenced reservoir, multiple pumps and a whole heap of work and expense. But by working out what we needed to achieve, applying it to the site and looking at the work we have already done, we just need a small settlement sump, a single pump and an extra water tank to store some of the water. We don't need to save all the water we get overwinter, just the rainfall when we are in the growing season. We can fairly easily feed the proposed sump with all our drain water and any excess can overflow back into the chalk aquifer. By positioning the new storage tank with the top of the tank at the same height as the existing one we don't even need to pump from one tank to the other, just leave them joined together and they will equalise levels. That is the sort of planning I like. We will need to trench from the sump at the bottom of the nursery to the new tank at the top, but we can utilise the same trench to send some of the tunnel drain water back to the sump at the same time, so that works joyously as a double ended solution. It just gets better and better. Generally 50% of the annual rainfall is in the winter when we don't need it on the nursery but the rest falls when we are irrigating so we should be able to get a good proportion of the rainfall recycled through the irrigation to take the pressure off the borehole use. Can't wait to get started, just wondering if we can fit it in before the season gets going full tilt.

Watch out this week if you get a delivery, there may be a flash of Hairy Pot livery on display. First batch came today, it's like Christmas again! 

Availability list highlights

Things are pretty quiet now and most plants are still in their winter dormancy, but there are still a few stars shining out there. The spring bulbs are beginning to sprout up with one or two hinting at some colour. There will be more appearing over the next few weeks I'm sure, especially if we don't freeze up too solidly. Please do bear in mind that it is still mid-winter so our unheated plant growth although healthy, is likely to be winter 'tight' in its habit and not soft and lush.

The long flowering Cyclamen coum varieties are coming along with flowers opening already. This coum series we are growing, flowers continuously from September to April given reasonable winter conditions, it is really hardy although the number of flowers open at any one time gives a more subtle and modest appearance than some of the very showy modern and less hardy pot cyclamen. A favourite of ours. Some of the Helleborus niger are still in strong bud and flower,

Pulmonaria varieties are shooting nicely after their winter trim. Blue Ensign and Opal are even showing buds. Aubretia in blue and red shades are looking bushy, nice and tight in growth habit with some flower colour showing, especially in the red. Most of this crop came to grief last year in a batch of dodgy compost, but thankfully it is looking fab this time. Another spring favourite are the Erysimum's which are coming on line now. Just the Red Jep with tight bud lurking among the foliage at the moment, but the Apricot Twist and Pastel Patchwork are looking strong and bushy too.

Take care out there, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries