Hairy experiments

Hi

Another busy week, or so it seems, Not as much achieved on the clearing and potting front but having a day missing at the start of the week doesn't help! We have seen some nice splashes of rain this week, enough to wet the ground but no flooding yet. The farm were a bit frustrated today, it's been dust dry for weeks and the day they start sowing our field with next years crop it just rains enough to clog the drill up and bring everything to a grinding halt. Last week it was the opposite with clouds of dust created by the tilling operations getting everything ready. Who would be a farmer?

I know it's tempting fate but the vans seem to have behaved a bit better this year, instead they have passed on the mantle to the forklift. It's out of action for the third time with a leaking ram, I wouldn't mind too much but it's the same ram each time so something is not right with the seal kits they are fitting. Anyway it has sat in the barn all week in an unmovable and useless state. This is the forklift, not the operator. Currently we are getting plenty of extra exercise filling the potting machine by shovelling the compost into plastic bins, transporting them to the machine on one of our buggy's and tipping the contents in by hand. Hopefully it won't be too long getting fixed as I may have a mutiny on my hands if we have to keep this up much longer.

It's September already next week, time for a potting push to get that extra bit of growth from the young plants while there is still enough light and warmth to put on a decent bit of growth before the short days kick in. Unfortunately it comes at the same time as the holidays packages all drop in price with the school terms starting up again. Over the whole month we have a combination of, nearly everyone taking their well earned holiday breaks, together with medical operation absences and sadly some bereavement leave. I suspect we will end up as usual, shifting some potting into early October but hopefully not too much. We have swapped our bulb supplier this year after a few hiccups with our old one, and the delivery is coming in next week, which is 6 weeks before last year. I am hoping this will provide a bit more root growth before winter, but it does add another several thousand pots to the potting schedule for the month which wasn't in the original plan. When I say 'plan' I really mean the series of rough guesses I take at the beginning of each day/week/month and year.

Our peat-free propagation saga continues with continuing mixed results from my module tray seed sowing. A positive step but in an expensive direction. Some of the smaller seed that germinated ok but then seemed to go backwards in condition over several weeks, have had a new lease of life. I did an experiment and manually pricked them out from the small celled trays into our slightly larger peat-free glue plug trays which we have used for years to wean our micro-prop plantlets into. I tried several varieties in them and they have gone nuts. Colour improved within days, root appeared out of the module base within a week and they are now big enough to pot after just 4 weeks. The plants left in the original tray are still rubbish, but still just about alive. I now have saved a few more trays, but it's like going back to the good old days of sowing into a seed tray and then pricking them out, it's not exactly the efficient model we try to work towards these days. The stable structure of the glue plug seems to be key so I have a sample of some super sifted seed compost coming next week, which I am hoping has a more stable structure than the others we have tried. There should be fewer very fine particles to block up all the air pockets, but still fine enough to level fill small cells in tray. More fun and games coming up testing out that theory.

Availability list.

Autumn flowering Cyclamen hederifolium is showing great colour. Rose and White looking at their best. Liriope muscari is now showing plenty of flowers so summer must be passing quick. Best we have ever had. Another autumn flowering line on the list this week is the Cerostigma with its stunningly blue flowers.

Two tone foliage of Tiarella Pink Skyrocket looks very smart, buds are just beginning to show themselves. Lovely new short bushy batch of Verbena bon. Lollipop now in bud. Compact and neat Achillea Milly Rock varieties coming into bud again for a quick splash before the weather turns.

The Salvia Lip's series and Salvito's are still going strong, we keep giving batches a trim to strengthen them up and keep them from getting too tall and they just keep bouncing back. There is a batch of the Astible Astary plants coming into flower, both in the pink and white varieties.

The Aster Alpha series are showing tight bud but close to selling out some colours, The more standard classic varieties of Aster varieties are also showing nice tight bud with the odd opening flower as well. Mini Garden Chrysanthemums are here, masses of bud on the first batch already with a hint of colour too. A fab range of the compact Helenium Hay Day series are budding well now, with colour showing.

Get ready for late winter flowers by planting our Helleborus range now. Just added a whole heap of different coloured Helleborus orientalis varieties. A mass of flower bud has appeared on a batch of short and bushy Lythrum Robert and Robin. Don't hang about. 

Take care, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

End of a hairy era

Hi

Bank holiday weekend coming up so it's holiday time all round. If only. Luckily there is still a week of August to go after the long weekend so that almost feels like a bonus, and gives us another few days to try and catch up with more tunnel tidying and potting. Nearly got a day off on Monday but I have just been informed that the next compost delivery is booked in on Monday afternoon so that messes that plan up, mind you I'm not complaining as it looks like we are going to come close to running out tomorrow and we can't pot much without it. The Dutch drivers aren't on holiday!

We had the potential to get a bit extra potted this week with a little more time on hand and a good show of hands to help out, but we were scuppered by running out of prepared tunnel space, so it was all hands on deck shifting a load of stock about, cutting it back, gapping up and setting down again in a cleaned area. It leaves all the older stock in one location and frees up whole tunnels for potting fresh stock into which is very gratifying when you see it completed but frustrating until you get there. I saw an interesting email from Fargro this week who where informing all their grower customers about the implementation of the packaging tax (EPR) that is being implemented over the next few years. Up until now there have been limited financial effects on producers especially the smaller ones, but that is about to change. Anything that is related to household packaging (all the stuff that ends up with the consumer) will have a charge made against it to cover the potential cost of disposing of it. So all bedding packs and plant pots will have a charge of £423 per tonne added to their purchase cost, so the grower will now cover the cost of final disposal. Fargro and some other suppliers are doing some sort of joint protest letter about how it could affect the industry in a very negative way, but I must say I was delighted to see this. Isn't it about time we faced up to our responsibilities and paid for the mess we create by flooding the consumer market with long life single use plastics. Thankfully we should avoid these charges as, by design, nothing we send out ends up as disposable waste with the consumer, it is all easily biodegradable. Even with our retailer sites the waste level is either zero or at worst very minimal, depending if on the rare occasion a bit of trolley wrap has been used on the delivery trolley. To be honest it makes little real financial difference to us as we are already paying ten times more for our coir pots than we would be paying for a plastic equivalent, but it does make me feel slightly better that there is now some penalty being paid for plastic use by everyone else, however small it seems to us.

Big day today with the last of the daily workload in the micro-prop lab finishing. There have only been three staff in there at any one time and for most of the last 4 months they have been out in despatch helping get through all the delivery preparations for at least three days a week. We have been winding the operation down for over a year now, with the last few months spent rooting out the last of the stock to come out onto the nursery for the final time. Today saw the last of that rooting, just leaving a few tubs of plantlets in the growth room that might move on to another grower. We were officially due to close it all at the end of May but the final throws of production caused it to drag out a bit longer than expected. Now I get my hands on three more staff to fit in around the nursery, so maybe we will catch up at last! The end of an era for us.

Availability list.

Autumn flowering Cyclamen hederifolium is showing great colour. Rose is the more advanced, but White is close behind. Another autumn flowering line on the list this week is the Cerostigma with its stunningly blue flowers. Not in bud yet but relatively neat and bushy at the moment. Two tone foliage of Tiarella Pink Skyrocket looks very smart, buds are just beginning to show themselves. Lovely new short bushy batch of Verbena bon. Lollipop now in bud.

The summer flowering Allium Millenium is still looking great, they just go on and on. Compact and neat Achillea Milly Rock varieties coming into bud again for a quick splash before the weather turns. The Salvia Lip's series are still going strong, we keep giving batches a trim to strengthen them up and keep them from getting too tall and they just keep bouncing back.

Liriope muscari is now showing plenty of flowers so summer must be passing quick. There is a batch of the Astible Astary plants coming into bud, both in the pink and white varieties. The Aster Alpha series are now showing tight bud, surely summer can't be drawing in just yet! The more standard classic varieties of Aster varieties are now also showing nice tight bud and the odd opening flower now as well.

Mini Garden Chrysanthemums are here, masses of bud on the first batch already with a hint of colour too. A fab range of the compact Helenium Hay Day series are budding well now, with colour showing. Get ready for late winter flowers by planting our Helleborus range now. Just added a whole heap of different coloured Helleborus orientalis varieties. A mass of flower bud has appeared on a batch of short and bushy Lythrum Dropmore Purple. Not many, so don't hang about. 

Take care, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hairy kingdom

Hi

The heat is back again much to my bodies dismay. I just don't have enough lightweight kit to wear in this weather and it wouldn't be fair on the world to uncover any more flesh than the bare minimum at my time of life. It's good timing for the school holidays I suppose and might encourage a few more people to stick to local destinations for their summer break which can't be a bad thing. Mega heat-waves and wildfires in Europe and Canada, Alaska towns flooding under big ice melts, things are looking like we might have missed the boat on changing our lifestyles to reduce our impact on the world. If you add in human political behaviour around the globe, things could be looking a bit bleak but hey-ho at least we have some lovely stewed pears in the fridge and a bit of ice-cream left to boost our feel-good levels.

Sometimes you just have to turn away from the big stuff and look to find magic elsewhere. I suppose that's why daft cat videos are so popular, although I can't say I know where to find them, not really my thing. I did hear this afternoon about a garden centre who had set up an area with funky backdrops and furniture so young folk could sit down with a plant or bit of gardening kit and TikTok themselves onto their social media channels. Now I know I'm old.

Further reminders of advancing years this week with the loss of wisdom by way of tooth extraction. The drugs were fab, absolutely painless and it took just moments to wrestle it out, but the aftermath has been somewhat uncomfortable. Topping this off with a major MOT at the doctors added extra momentum to the downhill journey with tests and samples taken from all over the place. However I am still upright and if I keep breathing I should be ok and it was a nice trip out.

Big NBIS visit and meeting this week, not a huge turnout but some new nursery folk to show round our hairy kingdom which is always exciting. It's all a bit mixed on the nursery at the moment with some tunnels freshly potted, some awaiting clearance and others looking a bit like a bombsite, but everyone seemed very understanding of the time of year and the way our seasons run. As a nursery going in its own direction there are lots of slightly unusual bits for them to see, there aren't many nurseries with wooden box printing and construction benches, 20 tonne hydraulic presses, tilting solar panels, two container loads of coir pots and 1.2 million sushi skewers sitting in stock. There are heavy duty tarmac tampers for helping encourage the stacks of coir pots to separate, 1,000 addition new sprinklers to admire and three wind turbines to marvel at, all a bit different. I was quite surprised at how excited they got about it all and nice polite things were said. Best of all we went to the pub for lunch.

Solar panels gave us a bit of grief this week when they went on a go slow. Luckily because we monitor the meters very closely we notice output dropped for 2 days despite good sunny weather and an error message appeared on the app. The system limits our production to stay within our allowed export levels, but it was actually cutting output to a much lower level. The error message said the panels had lost contact with the online controller, so check the internet is ok or it could be the weather affecting the wi-fi connection. Nothing I did made any difference and as a last resort I was advised to turn the whole system off for 10 minutes and on again. Sure enough after 25 minutes all was back to normal. So it doesn't matter how big the kit is if it won't play ball turn it off and on again. I wonder if they do that with the National Grid every now and then. 

Availability list.

Autumn flowering Cyclamen hederifolium have the first few flowers showing colour. Rose is the more advanced, but White is just beginning to perform too. Seems early but they are in flower in our garden as well. Another autumn flowering line on the list this week is the Cerostigma with its stunningly blue flowers. Not in bud yet but relatively neat and bushy at the moment.

Two tone foliage of Tiarella Pink Skyrocket looks very smart. It should be budding up any minute but I still can't see them. There is a fresh batch of Nepeta Junior Walker in bud this coming week. Much shorter than Walkers Low or Six Hills. Lovely new short bushy batch of Verbena bon. Lollipop now in bud.

The summer flowering Allium Millenium is still looking great, they just go on and on. The Salvia Lip's series are still going strong, we keep giving batches a trim to strengthen them up and keep them from getting too tall and they just keep bouncing back. Fresh flowers are coming on the Sanguisorba Tanna after another trim back.

Liriope muscari has started producing flowers so summer must be passing quick. To be fair it's only the first few, so a little while to go before a full show. There is a batch of the Astible Astary plants coming into bud, both in the pink and white varieties. The first of the Aster Alpha series are now showing tight bud, surely summer can't be drawing in just yet! No, they are early. Other Aster varieties beginning to show very tight bud now as well

Mini Garden Chrysanthemums are here, masses of bud on the first batch already with a hint of colour too. A fab range of the compact Helenium Hay Day series are budding well now, with colour showing.

Take care, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hairy honesty

Hi

A lovely week on the weather front, a bit of rain, pleasant temperatures and just enough breeze to push the turbines round. Warming up for the weekend but hopefully not too oppressive.

Sales are still bowling along which is always good news, even if it slows up the potting team. Although we are well ahead on the potting front, there are always batches of plants shouting out to be potted. It is usually about 5 in the morning I hear them and then they keep banging away until it's time to get up!

Time is flying by and I can't believe it is already our turn to host our revamped NBIS group next week. It seemed like such a good idea to make the invitation back in February, August seems miles away, and here we are. We have had no spare time yet to tidy up, so that will be another extra job to slot in before Thursday and at least brush out despatch and the loos before they arrive. The group has a new lease of life at the moment with a vital influx of new members, so there should be a host of new people to bamboozle with waffle, so they don't notice the late summer chaos dotted around the site. As you might already have guessed this is my specialty and with a host of different stuff going on here that you don't often see at other sites, I have plenty of ammunition to create an effective smokescreen. I will be able to confirm to all, my reputation for spending all the family silver on projects that have taken my fancy over the previous year. So not only can I show off our lovely plants and unique combination of coir pots, peat-free composts, wooden marketing trays, card based pot labels and wooden printed price labels, but also show off all the new stuff recently added. We have the tilting bifacial solar panels and battery store married in with our existing wind turbines, tray filling and seed sowing machines, upgraded irrigation system, heaters and electrics installed over the winter. To be fair it's not really a vehicle to show off, it is very much a peer learning experience, so we do have to share our more difficult experiences too. The main one this time will be the demise of our micro-prop lab which is in the final throws of its existence. The economics just don't stack up for us, with competition from parts of the world with super cheap labour rates, blowing us out of the water. The last two or three crops are still finishing off in there and then the lights go out on 30 years investment and knowledge. Sad but exciting at the same time. We lose that sinking feeling of constantly trying and failing to make ends meet financially in there and we gain a new production area and a heap more time to put to better use. Another new era gets started.

One of those changes will be bumping up our other in-house propagation work, so that we can increase the amount of peat-free propagation material we pot into our Hairy Pots. Hopefully we can improve this summers results which have been very variable, as I mentioned last week, we certainly have a few ideas on how to improve things and we definitely can't afford too many hiccups along the way. There are a couple of other new improvements we are looking to make over the winter which should make looking after our plants in the retail environment a little easier in the coming seasons. It's nothing too drastic, but it should reduce the watering pressures a bit, which looks like being ever more important as the climate gets more and more erratic. More of that at a later date when I have managed to wrangle the cash to get it all done.

Availability list.

Autumn flowering Cyclamen hederifolium have the first few flowers showing colour. Rose is the more advanced, but White is just beginning to perform too. Seems early but they are in flower in our garden as well. Another autumn flowering line on the list this week is the Cerostigma with its stunningly blue flowers. Not in bud yet but relatively neat and bushy at the moment.

Two tone foliage of Tiarella Pink Skyrocket looks very smart. It should be budding up any minute but I can't see them just yet. There is a fresh batch of Nepeta Junior Walker in bud this coming week. Much shorter than Walkers Low or Six Hills.

Lovely new short bushy batch of Verbena bon. Lollipop now in bud. The summer flowering Allium Millenium is still looking great, they just go on and on. The Salvia Lip's series are still going strong, we keep giving batches a trim to strengthen them up and keep them from getting too tall and they just keep bouncing back. The same goes for the Salvia Salvito which just keep on performing.

Fresh flowers are coming on the Sanguisorba Tanna after another trim back. Liriope muscari has started producing flowers so summer must be passing quick. To be fair it's only the first few, so a little while to go before a full show. There is a batch of the Astible Astary plants coming into bud, both in the pink and white varieties.

The first of the Aster Alpha series are now showing tight bud, surely summer can't be drawing in just yet! No, they are early. Other Aster varieties beginning to show very tight bud now as well. Mini Garden Chrysanthemums are here, masses of bud on the first batch already with a hint of colour too. A fab range of the compact Helenium Hay Day series are budding well now, with colour showing.

Take care, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hairy angle

Hi

Biblical rain showers today with localised flooding all around the nursery. Luckily they were relatively short or we might not be here. Water levels have subsided and fingers are crossed that we have seen the last of them for today.

Newest Fiat is back from the garage after a two week stop over Luckily the clutch was ok, it was only a split hydraulic pipe hidden away in a dark corner. The delay was partly a busy workshop and the delivery delay for the part, but at least the bill was a sensible size. First trip out in it we picked up a rear flat tyre and a crack in the windscreen, so that is all three hiccups done, we should be in for a better run now.

It's a tricky time of year with still plenty of sales going on, but a desperate need to clear space and get the potting done for next Springs crops and not enough hours in the week. Young plants are still arriving and our home produced plants are coming on strong too, so there is plenty of pressure to get on with it, I just have to make some decisions as to which batches we do first. I had a plan in my head that this summer would be less frantic, with our micro-prop lab closing at the end of May and the staff, that are left moving to do outside stuff, we would be looking for things for them to do. As usual my plans went out the window pretty early, when it became apparent that to use up the last of the crops in the lab efficiently and economically the work had to continue into the summer. The growth room looks very empty now, which is a bit of a sad sight, so there can't be long to go before we can turn off all the kit. We have plans to dismantle the dissolving growth room and work room, both of which barely hold themselves together, over the winter to give us an extended covered area for either despatch work or more general propagation tasks. We already have a protective poly-tunnel covering the two rooms as they were leaking so badly, so we just need to sort the floor and sides out to have a nice new area to play in.

I have a new reminder of passing time with an email received this week from Cornish Rocker informing me that it was time to tilt our solar panels to 30 degrees, so the sun must now be sinking. We have six tilt changes a year, ranging from 16 to 60 degrees to catch as much sun as we can on a single angle tilt. It's just a 20 minute job to reset all 15 gantries so no big deal and hopefully we will reap the rewards in the winter when the deeper angles should pay dividends. The combination of panels, turbines and batteries looks great for removing most of our electric unit costs. The turbines produce more than we use over the year, but not all at the right time, so we still imported half our usage. But with the solar and batteries installed it looks like we will only import between 5 and 10% which will help pay back the investment. The tricky bit we are stuck with are the daily standing charges and daily capacity charge which will now account for over 75% of the bill.

My seed sowing for the year is nearly done and overall we are really pleased with the kit we bought in the winter. But the module trays and lack of extractor are still frustrating us and the peat free propagation mixes we have been trying have been disappointing in overall performance. The herbs and more vigorous perennials have done ok, but the smaller seeded and slower growing varieties have been generally pretty poor. Naturally I assumed it was my growing skills that were at fault but having had an expert prop person in who has seen similar and worse results elsewhere, I don't feel as guilty. Buoyed by this news I have asked two producers to come up with mixes that are more stable than the current mixes, fine enough to fill small modules but without the fine particles which are currently washing into all the air pockets creating a sodden airless mass that the roots hate. If we reduce the watering the trays with the more vigorous stock dry out which messes all of it up. The costs are going to be higher with lots of extra grading and sieving but if it works it will be well worth it.

Availability list.

The summer flowering Allium Millenium is still looking great, they just go on and on. The Salvia Lip's series are still going strong, we keep giving batches a trim to strengthen them up and keep them from getting too tall and they just keep bouncing back. The same goes for the Salvia Salvito which just keep on performing.

Fresh flowers are coming on the Sanguisorba Tanna after another trim back. Loads of flower with a mixed colour pallet in the Lewisia batches. They will go on and on.We have a lovely range of very popular summer Gaura at the moment, in bud and showing some colour.

Liriope muscari has started producing flowers so summer must be passing quick. To be fair it's only the first few, so a little while to go before a full show. There is a batch of the Astible Astary plants coming into bud, both in the pink and white varieties. Hot high summer flowering Crocosmia are showing tight bud on all varieties this week.

The first of the Aster Alpha series are now showing tight bud, surely summer can't be drawing in just yet! No, they are early. Mini Garden Chrysanthemums are here, masses of bud on the first batch already with a hint of colour too.

A fab range of the compact Helenium Hay Day series are budding well now, with colour showing. Nemesia Wisley Vanilla are doing their thing with its pretty creamy white flowers and heady vanilla scent. We have a late batch of Geum Lemon Drops with some flower appearing, not many pots so don't be shy on ordering. 

Take care, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hairy extraction

 

Hi

Not sure where the week went, a frenzy of activity again or possibly I'm getting so old I just can't remember what is going on any more and one just blurs into the next.

I can't believe it is the end of the week already, but here we are. We must have done quite a bit in reality as the sales volume increased a bit this week and we are going to run out of potting compost tomorrow so someone is doing something. Had a mild panic on Wednesday when despatch seemed to slump into slow motion with the orders taking nearly all day to complete. I recovered quickly when Caroline pointed out that we were actually 8 people down that day for a host of reasons so the result was bound to get done!

Tunnel clearing continues with very satisfying transformations from bombsite conditions to clean and tidy empty beds ready for the next crop. We have been making a concerted effort this summer to get the tunnels as prepared as we can for the fresh potting, eradicating any nearby weeds, laying a fresh layer of Strulch mulch around all the internal tunnel edges on the outer edge of the production sand-beds to suppress any later weed germination. This is something we have done in bits and pieces before but never managed to cover the whole site quite so thoroughly. With the irrigation sprinkler upgrade taking place at the same time, evening out the water distribution, the fresh crops going in are looking so much more uniform. The only hiccup so far is the amount of blackbird activity picking over the mulched edges in search of grubs and making the bed edges rather untidy after we had done such a neat job.

After last week's delivery of irrigation sprinkler parts I have already run out of nozzles, so it's back to doing a 90% job in each refurbished tunnel until the next batch of correct nozzles arrive. A bit frustrating but not a disaster. A far better result than the fiasco of our new legged propagation trays I bought in February to go through the new seed sowing machinery. We had to wait nearly five month for that delivery and then they didn't come with an extractor plate. I had hoped they would fit some of the other plates we have here but no such luck. Ordered some straight away and we are still waiting for delivery. We have used all the trays several times already and every cell has had to be pushed out individually which takes forever in comparison to all the other trays we use which have the proper extractor. Finally heard this week that their extractor plate supplier had stopped production and they were considering taking the job in-house, but hadn't actually done so yet. So 5 more months have passed and we are no nearer having the delivery. Not sure what business model they are working on, but to produce a labour saving module propagation tray and then not have an extractor for it somehow defeats the whole purpose of the job. A few hours poking does keep me off the streets, which you can all be thankful for. 

Availability list.

Herb range still looking yummy, with plenty of fresh batches still coming through. The summer flowering Allium Millenium is still looking great. The Salvia Lip's series are still going strong, we keep giving batches a trim to strengthen them up and keep them from getting too tall and they just keep bouncing back. The same goes for the Salvia Salvito which just keep on performing.

Verbena's are doing their summer thing, another we keep trimming back to stop them reaching the heavens although Lollipop is a little more restrained. Fresh flowers are coming on the Sanguisorba Tanna after another trim back. Loads of flower with a mixed colour pallet in the Lewisia batches. They will go on and on.

We have a lovely range of very popular summer Gaura at the moment, in bud and showing some colour, with the final variety of the year making a show now. Rosy Gem is a pretty bicoloured variety but I just have the one batch this summer. It should stick around a little while as I splashed out on quite a big batch!

Liriope muscari has started producing flowers so summer must be passing quick. To be fair it's only the first few, so a little while to go before a full show. There is a batch of the Astible Astary plants coming into bud, both in the pink and white varieties. Hot high summer flowering Crocosmia are showing tight bud on all varieties this week.

The first of the Aster Alpha series are now showing tight bud, surely summer can't be drawing in just yet! No, they are early. Mini Garden Chrysanthemums are here, masses of bud on the first batch already with a hint of colour too. A fab range of the compact Helenium Hay Day series are budding well now, with colour showing. Nemesia Wisley Vanilla are doing their thing with its pretty creamy white flowers and heady vanilla scent. Rhodanthemums are in bud and flower ready to bloom their socks off for the rest of the summer.

Strong bushy Osteospermum Tresco Purple are now budding up nicely. We have a late batch of Geum Lemon Drops with some flower appearing, not many pots so don't be shy on ordering. 

Take care, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.