Hectic and hairy

Morning all,

Need some rain please, not just to wet the soil in the gardens but to slow up demand a bit. We are struggling to find any time to do anything but despatch. The consecutive 4 day weeks don't help, and ongoing absences have taken their toll, the frustration of not getting jobs done tends to mask the rejoicing at selling so many plants. The rejoicing bit is definitely well masked this week and I wonder if we have the work/life balance quite mastered yet as I notice Caroline nodding off while over-sticking barcodes for a customer late one night. We will save the celebrations for when things quieten down a bit.

So what went well this week? I suppose getting all the orders out before the weekend was a great result and special thanks must go to the skeleton crew who came in on Monday to get the deliveries off to a flying start early on Tuesday. We sent out a huge amount of microprop modules to growers this week, on top of everything else, something like 20% of the entire years microprop output in one week. We squeezed in a short potting thrash on Friday afternoon and will have another go tomorrow, but did manage to stop the machine three times in as many hours. Luckily it didn't actually break it just stopped. It is much cleverer that the old one and it trips out the motor if it detects a jam somewhere. Having used the new machine several weeks now, we hadn't seen this issue before but three times today the odd escapee pot jammed in the compost lifting mechanism. In the old days this would mean digging out all the compost by hand to get to the problem which was a huge pain, but the new machine not only stops early, it has a switch to reverse the compost delivery belt which takes the pressure off the lifter. Then there is a release mechanism that drops away part of the floor of the machine under the lifter, to allow easy and safe access to clear any blockages. A very well thought out solution enabling us to get up and running again in minutes rather than hours. Valuable lessons learnt today.

With the (organised) despatch chaos this week I completely forgot about the first pot delivery of the year which came in early on Thursday. One of several containers we take in each season, it had been delayed from last autumn in the hope that container delivery prices would fall back. Sadly the plan failed and we ended up paying over $10,000 rather than the usual $1,200. To help mitigate the higher prices our very enthusiastic pot makers in Sri Lanka, went to great lengths to fit more pots into every available space. They squeezed the pot stacks in each box a little tighter so increasing the amount in a box and used all sorts of different sized boxes to loose-fill any spare gaps in the container. In the end it will result in one less container being used this year, which could save a lot if prices don't fall back and will help in the long run whatever happens. There are a few down sides, the container took slightly longer to unload and the tighter packed pot stacks in the boxes will mean extra manual pot wrestling when loading the potting machine. We've had a quick practice with one of the new boxes and it doesn't seem too bad so fingers crossed it all works out ok.

Wooden box returns appeal

We are eating our way through our new stock of wooden boxes scarily quickly, I can't believe how all that winter work has now nearly all gone. Can I make an appeal to anyone using our empty boxes as part of their display constructions, to try and find some alternative materials to use. Each box costs us £10 to replace and it doesn't take many to disappear into such a display for large amounts of valuable box stock to be left unused by us. Those empty boxes sitting there are not earning their keep with us, which increases our costs and consequently our prices to you.

Availability list highlights

After a long and hectic run we are quite short of stock in bud at the moment. Overall stock levels for the perennials are still ok, just short on flower action. The herb stock is definitely low for the coming week and is likely to be so for 2 or 3 more weeks as we end the overwintered batches of some stock and await the readiness of the new stock. Demand for herbs has taken us by surprise after a quieter year in 2021 when I got carried away and over produced in the summer, after such a busy 2020 (once it started).

We have a couple of Camassia showing bud, the lovely white form the excellent blue Maybelle. Very late flowering Narcisuss Sun Disc are now in bud. A small flowered beauty it is worth the wait. So late it is almost a novelty! First flowers are opening and not many left so don't hang about.

Low growing Erodiums in both colours are budding now, ready to flower all summer long. Spring favourite the Erysimum's are now in bud. We have some lovely batches of Salvia nemerosa varieties bulking up well with several varieties already in bud.

A spring flush of healthy shoot growth on our overwintered Phlox range, all looking very strong. Best crop ever as we have managed to keep the pigeons off them.

Have fun, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries