Hairy Footprint

Morning all,

A busy week as usual, lots of rushing about, ordering bits and pieces to put the nursery back together again after a hectic year. Tunnel doors, our copper dosing system, trolleys, boxes, vans and the forklift all got attention this week, with a few plants being tickled up too. The mild weather is keeping many of the plants in a growing mood with a few getting a bit too ahead of themselves for my liking. Although it's easier to work in the warm, I do like to see a bit of more cold to put the stock through a decent dormant period, ready to freshen up again with an early spring burst. Many pests are still active and multiplying which is a pain, especially as it is too late now to add more predators into the unheated tunnels. Hopefully the few that are still there are active too so we don't carry to many pests through the winter.

We had a quick tidy up early in the week in preparation for the NBIS meeting we hosted on Thursday. Luckily it was already pretty tidy so it didn't take long, but it had the desired affect and our visitors seemed suitably impressed with both the state of the nursery and all the investment we have done since they were last here, just before Covid. We had a celebrity element to the event with Pippa Greenwood in attendance in her HTA support role. It was her first visit here so I'm hoping she enjoyed what she saw. She seemed fairly excited by the time we got round, but that might have been the thought of the upcoming pub lunch! Unfortunately the group is struggling a bit on member numbers with quite a few retiring or closing their nurseries, together with a lack of new nurseries signing up. It's a shame because I know I have got a huge amount from the quarterly meetings over the last 25 years, with benchmarking and discussion of the basic financial figures, cherry picking ideas from other nurseries, avoiding things that go wrong for others, as well as the therapeutic benefits of unloading all your business woes on a regular basis to a sympathetic audience. It is called a Business Improvement Scheme and it definitely does that for us, I only have to pick up one odd idea or piece of useful information every now and then, for it to make a major difference to our bottom line or mental wellbeing. Hopefully Pippa's and the HTA's enthusiasm will attract a few more members, because we will fail before long if we can't add the spark of excitement that fresh blood can bring.

Part of this week's meeting was an great opportunity to quiz the HTA Net Zero advisor, which was really useful for getting a realistic view on the current situation, which can get a bit bewildering when you get stuck into it. In a nutshell we have all been asked to start on our journey to Net Zero but no one (the Government) has yet set out a definitive route. As a consequence it is very difficult to plan your way to your goal, especially if you have already made a good start on it and completed most of the obvious on site changes needed. The main problem is how to sensibly calculate what your entire carbon situation is, because it is potentially a very complicated sum. Until everyone has an idea what their footprint is they can't let their customers know the footprint of the goods they supply to them. If the customer doesn't know the footprint of the goods, they can't work out their own footprint. It's a bit of a Catch 22 situation but I'm sure it can be overcome. As we all get better at working it out, the numbers will gradually become more accurate and we can all work out our true impact. One tricky part is that all the extra work involved in collecting the info and working it all out, isn't productive and simply adds to costs, which in the current climate isn't a great incentive, however there are gains to be made, if it helps us focus on reducing our inputs.

A nice example of this has been our focus on reducing our own CO2 output since 2009, when we joined our first sustainable business group. We reduced our direct CO2 emissions from 121 tonnes in 2008, to 81 tonnes in 2011, and now we are at 59 tonnes. Part of this change is the reduction of electricity used (that is 'used' not imported), on site from 120,000 kWhrs/year in 2008 to 60,000 over the last year, despite actually having a lot more electrical kit on site and nearly doubling our turnover. That is an a minimum saving of 420,000 units and at least £80,000. We already have in place most of the energy savings we could make, so the recent increases in energy costs are having a relatively small impact and our bill is likely to be at least half of what it might have been. If we add in the impact of installing the wind turbines in 2011 as well, the figures look even better. Suddenly the positive financial benefits of our push for sustainability all those years ago really make economic sense. I will leave you to imagine the smug look of the author! 

Wooden Box returns.

We have a barn full of dried, cleaned and stacked boxes which is very satisfying. If you have any more empties you would like us to pick up just drop us a line.

Availability list highlights

Winter and spring flowering Cyclamen coum are now available in small numbers with more coming on stream for later. Most are in bud with some colour showing, even the Silver Leaved have some bud, but not quite as many. We have a good range of Helleborus in stock, to stretch those Autumn sales. Not a lot of flower yet but full of winter promise.

Best wishes  from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

Hairy therapy

Morning all,

St Ives seems an eternity away already as we slip back into all the excitement of nursery life. It's been a bit damp this week but I know we have got off lightly in comparison to some so I'm not complaining. Apparently we are now out of the hosepipe restrictions imposed in the summer, let's hope they have caught enough of this rainfall to see us through next summer. Installation of our own rainfall recycling system took a big step forward this week with all the quotes in and a ground-works contractor selected. We just need to fine tune a few details and we could be underway very soon. We have had all the hardware delivered and paid for since last winter, but struggled to get someone here to get it all dug in and constructed. We are hoping to see a system up and running before the irrigation gets going in earnest again in the spring. The current installation will see plenty of rainfall collection for immediate reuse and some extra storage, but not to the extent that we can hold enough of the winter rainfall to see us through most of the year. That will be the next stage and although relatively simple to do, it will need planning applications, more engineering input and another big dollop of investment. We are not looking at a mega lake but a fair size pond and with us being on a slope will need some careful calculations for cutting and filling of the ground and banks. Firstly we need to see how much water we can collect and use in stage one of the plan and maybe stage two can hold off a bit longer, we'll see. The tricky financial part of the whole job is that the investment is big but the current savings are negligible, which makes it a short term loser on the books. What it will do is future proof the nursery from possible water restrictions or changes to abstraction rules, which in the current climate emergency, we think makes it a sensible investment.

We are hosting our NBIS group this coming week, so will need to have a quick sweep round and tidy the place up a bit, so we can give a passing impression of professionalism. It must be pre-covid that they were last here, so there will be quite a few new bits to show off (staff kit, despatch heating and cooling set up, 20t label press, new labels, wooden box printing and assembly line (table and hammer), new potting machine set up and the highlight of the tour, the new loo's). The real highlight is usually lunch at the pub in reality, plus fancy biscuits round the meeting table. It's really just a glorified, but very valuable, therapy session for most of us, and with the way things are going we will certainly need a bit of talking therapy to overcome some of our current anxieties.

We had a good week on the maintenance front with the stripping of a damaged polytunnel cover and the replacement of all the timber frame components which had completely rotted away. I had looked at the forecast early in the week and guessed Friday might be the only chance to get it covered up again before the return of more unsettled weather, so the rush was on to get the reconstruction completed in time while dodging the rain. I love it when a plan comes together, and sure enough the sun was out on Friday morning with low winds and by 10.00am we had it on, stretched and fixed. Just in time as the winds picked up soon after and clouds rolled in. That's not luck, that's great management!

Struggling to recover my pre-holiday physic with holiday treats for coffee plus mega polish homemade cakes all week. So difficult to say no, one wouldn't wish to appear rude. The layered chocolate sponge, with thick cream layers, and nutty praline, topped off with a Ferrero Rocher was epic, and wrote off any hope of a quick recovery from the holiday excesses. Just a couple more pieces to go and then definitely watching the calories until Christmas.

Wooden Box returns.

We have a barn full of dried, cleaned and stacked boxes which is very satisfying. If you have any more empties you would like us to pick up just drop us a line. It may take a little while to get there as we are not on the road very much now, but we will get there eventually.

Availability list highlights

The range is getting quite low now as the autumn lines sell out or finish flowering.

Winter and spring flowering Cyclamen coum are now available in small numbers with more coming on stream for later. Most are in bud with some colour showing, even the Silver Leaved have some bud, but not quite as many which is why I haven't yet marked them as flowering on the main list.

We have a good range of Helleborus in stock, to stretch those Autumn sales. Not a lot of flower yet but full of winter promise.

Best wishes from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Best wishes  from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

Hairy economy

Morning all,

It feels like September out there today, lovely warm sunshine and a gentle breeze, a perfect day for a bit of light autumn gardening. Hopefully there are still a few active gardeners out there who have not run out of cash yet. I know there will be plenty of retailers out there hoping that the pre Christmas spending isn't dented too hard, as this has become such a busy time for many centres and we don't want anyone to start the New Year in too much of a negative mood. All the indications are that many growers are taking an understandably cautious approach to next year's production targets, with so many challenges already in the system let alone whatever else is going to pop up.

Having recently finished our annual stock-take and seeing all the costs lined up in one document it feels pretty scary when I think of the implications that has on prices and shrinking margins. Just as we start making a sensible recovery from the Covid disruption it all gets threatened again by cost increases the like of which we have never seen before. The danger, as an aging nurseryman, is that I fail to react in a sensible commercial manner. I don't really get out much and witness on a daily basis just how much everything costs nowadays, so I can very easily undervalue the products we sell and fail to allow for any reward for the work undertaken over the year, or worse still, return to making a loss and then finding it difficult to justify continuing. This in turn puts not just our nursery jobs at risk, but the financial wellbeing of the village in Sri Lanka that make our pots. In a nut shell this is building up to announcing a fairly weighty price increase for 2023 which I will let you know about by email over the next few days. I am going to keep it as low as I can, at a lower rate than our costs are actually rising and we will try and make up any shortfall with increases in efficiency and reducing waste. It's going to be achallenging season for everyone, consumers, staff, retailers and suppliers, but hopefully the inflation pressures will ease in the not too distant future with settling energy and food prices and we can get back to some sort of normality, if we can remember what that was like!

I have just got back from two weeks out in the real world and come back with having lost too many pounds in currency and gained too many in weight, thank goodness for elasticated waistbands. Sharing a big rented house near the sea with friends was just the break we needed, despite wind and rain on all but 2 days. We saw some fantastic seas, views and wildlife as well as a lot of menus, empty plates and crumpled pasty bags. Can't believe it's over already and we are back on the nursery, but I don't think there's much more give in the elastic so it's just as well.

Between the showers the light was brilliant and we had some great sightings including, feeding Blue Fin Tuna leaping out of the sea just off the coastguard station in St Ives, multiple Black Redstarts in the garden of the house, a Water Rail running across the road near Lands End, a peregrine falcon attacking a flock of starlings and masses of waders in Hayle Estuary. Now time to knuckle down to minimal meals and less beer, otherwise I am going to have to up size to a new wardrobe.

The nursery is looking pretty smart on our return, the wood store got rebuilt with a fresh cladding of matching pallets and a new floor, the broken trolley shelves are all sorted and repaired where we can. Doors, vents and blinds have been repaired and re-clad, lots of plants mulched and wooden boxes made and I can see the office floor, I had forgotten it was that colour! With my mum is residence the house got a spring clean too so I am thinking we must go away more often.

Wooden Box returns.

We have a barn full of dried, cleaned and stacked boxes which is very satisfying. If you have any more empties you would like us to pick up just drop us a line. It may take a little while to get there as we are not on the road very much now, but we will get there eventually.

Availability list highlights

The range is getting quite low now as the autumn lines sell out or finish flowering.

Winter and spring flowering Cyclamen coum are now available in small numbers with more coming on stream for later. Most are in bud with some colour showing, even the Silver Leaved have some bud, but not quite as many which is why I haven't yet marked them as flowering on the main list.

We have a good range of Helleborus in stock, to stretch those Autumn sales. Not a lot of flower yet but full of winter promise. Evergreen Lithodora are still looking smart, as are the Liriope.

Erigeron Stallone still in flower although quite big plants now. Likely to still be in flower at the end of the year if we don't hit a sudden mini ice age. Ours outside the back door, is usually still showing colour at Christmas.

Best wishes  from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries