Hairy planning

Hi

Loads of compost, another container of pots and more young plants delivered but still no time to hit the potting hard. Getting a bit desperate to make some inroads into the production backlog, but another busy sales week together with holidays and a load of occasional and sick days this week decimated the available man hours so very little got done. The fallout from the rather disappointing spring weather is beginning to come home to roost with a shortage of empty tunnels and a slight over stocking of young plants. Don't get me wrong, sales have been steady over the season and are pretty good at the moment, but we missed out on those odd mega weeks we usually get when the weather works out perfectly for the gardeners over the peak spring period. There is space out there but it is taking a lot more work to find and clear it which just adds to the production hiccups. Last year we had whole tunnels prepared well ahead of the potting team creating periods of constant potting output which smashed through the waiting young stock, we are going to have to find another plan for this summer.

We have already started moving some of the weeny modules into our own big reusuable peat free trays so that they keep on growing and gives us the chance to pot them a little later in the season. It adds a bit to the plant handling but critically it keeps the plants growing with vigour. It is always a bit of a juggle this plant growing thing, we just make it up as we go really.

Put in an order for a new tray filler and seeder to speed up our own propagation work and possibly add a few more lines to our peat free home-grown list. Not an investment I would normally consider as it runs into tens of thousands but we had a grant offer of 50% funding through the Rural Payment Agency and I couldn't resist. It's always fun getting a new toy. We won't be properly operational until next seasons sowing, but it will take quite a bit of fettling to get it all to work properly, so a nice winter project.

I'm hoping the solar panels will be in before then, so even more toys to play with. At least this one generates cash from the day you turn it on! Planning is slowly progressing, the period of public input has passed uneventfully, we just have to fill in another biodiversity plan for a grassland area and a couple of trees and we should be all ready to go. Good job there is no rush to save the planet.

Availability list.

Summer is rushing by and the Autumn flowering Cyclamen hederifolium are just about ready with the odd bud and flower already on show. Lots more growth and flower to come. Lovely foliage plants on show with Ajuga, Euphorbia and Heuchera displaying nicely.

Looking great are our new compact and very early flowering range of Asters is now on stream. The Alpha series has fresh green foliage and very neat domed habit carrying masses of flower. Fresh batches of Scabiosa in bud, green compact and bushy with masses of bud on the way.

Fresh batches of the summer and autumn flowering mini garden Chrysanthemums are coming into bud. Golden leaved Tradescantia Blue and Gold looking good with plenty of bud and colour. Tiarella wherrii are back on the list and in flower again, and the premium variety Pink Skyrocket are also ready with attractive foliage and I am hoping for bud shortly.

Exotic Oxalis Iron Cross in flower now. Summer flowering Crocosmia are now throwing up bud and flower. Summer colour is on its way with the Gaura range doing it's thing. Hoping to have a good run of availability over the next few months but they are selling so fast there may be the odd short break.

New range for this year is the Helenium Hayday series, Five colours, nice and compact and already showing good colour. Fresh crops of Erigeron karv. Stallone are ready with its tiny multicolour daisy flowers that keep coming all through the summer and autumn. We have had bud on these at Christmas some years.

Salvia's of all sorts are now growing strongly and producing the first of many flowers. Sunshine yellow flowers of Euryops chrysanthemoides are beginning to open, another all summer performer. The hardy Osteospermum Tresco Purple are in bud and flower. Excellent bushy stock. Armeria Dreameria series of long season flowering Armerias are now showing plenty of colour with loads more to come. No white this year but a series of three pretty different pinks making a delightful show. The more standard classic Sea Thrift. Many of the Leucanthemums are coming into strong bud now with flowers open on some.

The Balloon Flower Platycodon Twinkle Blue and Twinkle White are now well into bud with the odd flash of colour. Rhodanthemum's are also in bud and showing colour, ready to flower all summer long. So many other lines doing their thing at the moment, Veronica, Penstemon, Lewisia, Astilbe, Achillea, Calamintha don't hold back make the most of them while they are here.

Best wishes from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hi

A hectic sales week again after the weather improvement which was perfectly timed to keep us off the potting machine, just enough to eek out the last remaining few meters of the potting compost pile to the end of the week. New load in on Tuesday should see a seamless transition from one batch to the other. It's like it was all planned!.

Luckily the last few hot days look like they will end over the weekend, allowing us to get back to a full day's work again on Monday so we can get on with tunnel clearance and potting as soon as we can. Time is suddenly passing really quickly and it's the middle of July already, the days are getting shorter and we need those plants in their pots putting on plenty of growth before autumn sets in. It's close to the point where an extra days growth at this time is worth a week in October and that really puts the pressure on.

Our solar planning project has been in the local paper the last couple of weeks as we await any responses one way or the other. Coverage was pretty accurate and positive, so hoping for the best.

All the vans were counted in and counted back again this week, so we are declaring all is well on the delivery front and may celebrate next week with a fresh packet of Rich Tea for coffee break. There's nothing like pushing the boat out.

I managed a day out this week at one of the spectacular Ball Colegrave open days. A fantastic display of bedding and perennials in garden settings, retail pots and trial areas. Spotted a couple of possible new varieties for next season, just need to check the costs to see if they are within our budget. The other unknown is how they will actually perform on the nursery and what the shelf life is like. Sometimes we get a good looking contender and find only half actually make a saleable plant in practice, on the other hand occasionally we find a real good doer where we sell every pot and they all look fab. It's all part of nursery progress.

Just finished doing another nursery tour this afternoon for a group from the NFU Mutual management team who were checking out how a few local agricultural businesses were developing new opportunities and markets and how they actually operate. A bit of an eye opener for some I suspect, especially on our small intensive scale when compared to the other highly mechanised arable businesses they were looking at. They seemed to enjoy it, despite the heat, and went away full of the random ramblings I dispelled over the afternoon. Not quite sure how much was that useful to them but they said they certainly got a feel of the passion we have to change things for the better. 

Availability list.

Looking great are our new compact and very early flowering range of Asters is now on stream. The Alpha series has fresh green foliage and very neat domed habit carrying masses of flower. Fresh batches of Scabiosa in bud, green compact and bushy with masses of bud on the way. Fresh batches of the summer and autumn flowering mini garden Chrysanthemums are already in bud. Golden leaved Tradescantia Blue and Gold looking good with plenty of bud and colour. Tiarella are back on the list and in flower again.

Exotic Oxalis in flower now in pastel pink or deep pink. Summer flowering Crocosmia are now throwing up bud and flower, Lobelia in bud now in a range of colours. Summer colour is on its way with the Gaura range doing it's thing. Hoping to have a good run of availability over the next few months but they are selling so fast there may be the odd short break.

New range for this year is the Helenium Hayday series, Five colours, nice and compact and already showing good colour. Fresh crops of Erigeron karv. Stallone are ready with its tiny multicolour daisy flowers that come all summer long. Salvia's of all sorts are now growing strongly and producing the first of many flowers.

Sunshine yellow flowers of Euryops chrysanthemoides are beginning to open, another all summer performer. Masses of bud and colour with the Bidens Efframs Gold. Already making an eye catching show they look fab. The hardy Osteospermum Tresco Purple are in bud and flower. Excellent bushy stock.

Armeria Dreameria series of long season flowering Armerias are now showing plenty of colour with loads more to come. No white this year but a series of three pretty different pinks making a delightful show. The more standard classic Sea Thrift. Many of the Leucanthemums are coming into strong bud now with flowers open on some.

The Balloon Flower Platycodon Twinkle Blue and Twinkle White are now well into bud with the odd flash of colour. Rhodanthemum's are also in bud and showing colour, ready to flower all summer long. So many other lines doing their thing at the moment, Sedum, Veronica, Penstemon, Lewisia, Astilbe, Fuchsia, Achillea, Coreopsis, Calamintha, don't hold back make the most of them while they are here. 

Best wishes from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hairy reminiscing

 

Masses to do with more deliveries of stock arriving for next year. Sales slowed up a bit after the damp weekend, but some fab stuff is leaving the nursery with so much bud and colour on show. Van celebrations this week as we nearly kept all five on the road. Just one slip with a cracked windscreen messing up the novelty of a full deck. Best news of all is that, touch wood, the rogue Fiat may well be cured after a whole week on the road and no warning lights or limp home mode engaged. We will give it another week before declaring success, but it looks promising.

We had a bit more time potting this week so made a bit of a hole in the backlog, but still a long way to go and I can see that frustratingly we are going to run out of compost before the next load is due. We will make good use of any spare time to clear some extra tunnel space ready to blast away when the opportunity comes and we also have a lot of wooden boxes coming back in now we have passed our peak in despatch, so plenty of those to clean up and start to stack away back into storage which will keep us off the streets.

Feeling my age a bit this week after being knocked back by a nasty bug. I was fairly convinced it wasn't covid until just as I thought I was improving a bit I lost my sense of taste and smell. Caroline assures me I do still smell which might be reassuring in some ways but less so in others. Hoping it returns soon, it makes meal times very dull and that's usually the highlight of the day. The other knock-back was attending the lovely retirement BBQ of our friends Roger and Mary who ran Choice Plants, a fantastic nursery, cafe and craft business which was so well loved by the local community. I met Roger just a few years ago in our college days, through hockey fixtures between Writtle and Wye College's, where he taught me all I know about 'Rabbits', the drinking game, after trouncing us on the pitch. Occasions where I have laughed 'till I thought I would burst. That makes us in the same age bracket and gentle reminder that time is passing by.

I'm looking forward to a day out next week with a visit to one of Ball Colgrave's summer open days. I went last year after a long break and picked up a couple of good new varieties as well as taking lots of images of plants we grow here, in their display gardens. Hopefully the taste buds will be operational by then as the packed lunch is worth the trip alone. I'm a cheap date! Talking of days out, it looks like the Nursery Business Improvement Scheme may be up and running again after a couple of years on the back burner. A meeting in August is proposed to re-launch it, with a new consultant at the helm which should add a new spark. I really miss the quarterly therapeutic benefits of having to own up to being a nurseryman and sharing all the cock ups and woes as well as all the successes. Just hope there are enough members left to make it work. 

Availability list.

Looking great are our new compact and very early flowering range of Asters is now on stream. The Alpha series has fresh green foliage and very neat domed habit carrying masses of flower. They are already in bud and it won't be long before colour appears. Fresh batches of Scabiosa in bud, green compact and bushy with masses of bud on the way.

The first batches of the summer and autumn flowering mini garden Chrysanthemums are already in bud. Summer flowering Crocosmia are now throwing up buds, Lobelia in bud now in a range of colours.

The Gaillardia Guapa series we are trying out are looking great. Strong and compact the first buds are already out. Summer colour is on its way with the Gaura range doing it's thing. Hoping to have a good run of availability over the next few months but they are selling so fast there may be the odd short break.

New range for this year is the Helenium Hayday series, Five colours, nice and compact and already showing good colour. Fresh crops of Erigeron karv. Stallone are ready with its tiny multicolour daisy flowers that come all summer long. Salvia's of all sorts are now growing strongly and producing the first of many flowers.

Sunshine yellow flowers of Euryops chrysanthemoides are beginning to open, another all summer performer. Masses of bud and colour with the Bidens Efframs Gold. Already making an eye catching show they look fab. The hardy Osteospermum Tresco Purple are in bud and flower. Excellent bushy stock.

Armeria Dreameria series of long season flowering Armerias are now showing plenty of colour with loads more to come. No white this year but a series of three pretty different pinks making a delightful show. The more standard classic Sea Thrift Many of the Leucanthemums are coming into strong bud now with flowers open on some.

The Balloon Flower Platycodon Twinkle Blue and Twinkle White are now well into bud with the odd flash of colour, Rhodanthemum's are also in bud and showing colour, ready to flower all summer long.

So many other lines doing their thing at the moment, Sedum, Veronica, Penstemon, Lewisia, Astilbe, Fuchsia,  Achillea, Coreopsis, Calamintha, don't hold back make the most of them while they are hot and the weather isn't! 

Best wishes from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.