Hairy chores

Hi

Another welcome dose of damp this week, in between some sunshine too. Weekend doesn't look too bad down here so it should help keep the gardeners happy. The combination of weather fronts and sunshine has kept our turbines and solar bowling along nicely with very regular surpluses of power being exported to the grid and only a tiny amount being imported, We are currently down to 4% of our consumption being imported rather than the pre-solar and battery storage level of about 45%, and our exporting has more than doubled, which should help pay back the rather hefty installation bill! Now we need an electric van to charge up, to use that excess power rather than receiving a rather low export payment. The rate we get paid for exporting is currently about a quarter of the amount we are charged for importing so we get a better return on our investment if we can use the power ourselves in a productive manner.

This week saw a massive intake of young plants for next year's output. Multiple suppliers sent in their deliveries as they promised, putting me back into a mild state of panic as we move from being marginally 'in control' of potting output, to being swamped and slightly overwhelmed. In theory we have plenty of people here to cope, especially with the micro-prop lab closing down, but suddenly there are holidays, sickness and injuries, plus one voluntary redundancy, and all the plans to get loads done go out the window. Hopefully next week will be quieter on the plant intake front and I will feel a bit more under control, I could check the master plan but I don't want to frighten myself, best wait and see.

I'm beginning to suffer already from an irrigation spray nozzle overdose, after two weeks of cutting and drilling the PVC overhead pipes, inserting grommets and pressing fittings together, let alone the after-effects of gluing all the pipe-work back together. This results in a certain light headiness at times and a lot of mucked up clothing. I now have a specific outfit for doing this job as I suspect that by the time this project is complete, although as an outfit it may well be able to stand up on its own, it won't be much use as clothing anymore.

I have been doing my chores at home too with Caroline currently spending part of the week helping her mum out. So far I've tidied up three tubs of ice cream, two bags of chocolate chips and a couple of bottle of PX sherry, can you guess what was on my favourite dessert list? Stocks are running so low now I might have to admit to my guilty habit and take the flack!There were quite a few packets of crisps running dangerously close to their sell by date, but we now don't have to worry about that either.

Lastly , take a breath and think of all those having a tough time at the moment, especially those who are close to you and send them some love. Most of the other stuff doesn't matter that much, people do.

Availability list.

Salvia Salvito Scarlet and Mauve, plus the Lip's series are all showing their first buds and hints of colour of the endless supply to follow. The summer flowering Allium Millenium is looking great. This very worthwhile allium is much tidier in habit and longer lasting than the spring flowering types, a proper impressive border plant.

A very popular designer plant Sanguisorba Tanna makes great ground cover and is now bursting with flower buds. Low growing Sedum Spot On Pink and Deep Rose are just breaking into colour, not many left so don't mss out. Digitalis Arctic Fox Rose is a smart grower, much tidier than the purpurea types with its long deep green leaves and strong compact flower stems. Bud is now on show but they won't hang about so don't hold back.

Fresh batches of the compact Achillea Milly Rock series are on line, three lovely colours available.Big flowering but compact, strong and stocky Gaillardia Guapa series, looking at their best with colour on show. The Garden Pinks are peaking in their bud production, no colour yet but loads of potential. We just have the one crop this spring so get them while you can. The Dianthus Scent First series smell delicious, compact and bushy they make a lovely set. Then we have our two scented old school varieties, Doris and Gran's Favourite, both a little taller and more typical of traditional cottage garden types.

Oxalis Iron Cross are looking great with its two tone leaves with the deep pink blooms. Nemesia Wisley Vanilla is back on the list again, with its pretty creamy white flowers and heady vanilla scent. Summer is well on the way with all the Bidens range showing particularly well, with a strong splashes flower. Rhodanthemums are in bud, and several Coreopsis are ready to do their thing.

Strong bushy Osteospermum Tresco Purple are now budding up nicely. More to come so no need to overdo it straight away. Liatris spicata are not far away from colour with strong flower stems extending and buds on show. Our massive Hosta range is looking great. A big range of leaf colours and sizes. 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 Jive

Hi

Nicely damp here. Luckily our rain has so far been steady rather than torrential although our drivers have been reporting some dramatically heavy downpours on their travels. we still have a few more days of unsettled weather which in the short term probably doesn't help sales but in the long term should be good news. The farm are biting their nails at the moment as it looks like the rain may have come too late for the earliest crops some of which are already turning colour. They will be ready early but probably a bit thin, not a great start to harvest in tricky times for the farmers. I have a feeling they are looking quite enviously at the constant ins and outs of our delivery vans over the past few months, we do seem to be having a fair run this season, although there is still a long way to go and plenty of opportunities to drop the batten before we can relax into the winter!

Very pleased with the new irrigation project which we started last week. New and extra sprinklers fitted into each line and shorter application times are definitely giving us a much more uniform spray pattern and reducing overall water use. The plant growth, even after only a week, is obviously so much more even and the temptation to turn on the watering to try and wet up any dry spots has gone. I'm up to 9 lines completed out of 71 so a little way to go yet, but the rewards look so good it's great motivation to press on asap. That's my evenings and weekends sorted for a couple of months!

I still manage one night out each week to get my Modern Jive fix. It is such a good night out, I can't think about anything else, as my brain is filled with trying to remember the old moves as well as trying to learn this week's new ones. My repertoire should be huge by now, but sadly retention of the new skills is pretty poor from week to week, if I manage to remember one new move another drops off the memory bank to make room! I am absolutely knackered by the end of three hours of vigorous exercise, but it's so enjoyable you don't notice until you stop. Luckily there is a vibrant crowd at Basingstoke at the moment with plenty of newbie's turning up, which always adds interest and a chance to encourage and mildly impress with those moves I can remember. After a few weeks I'm sure they cotton on that each time it's the same old stuff with me, but they still dance and laugh a lot, so it can't be too bad, either that or they are all very kind to an ageing jiver.

Availability list.

The increasingly popular less hardy Salvia varieties are showing great promise. Love and Wishes is well into bud, it just can't wait to flower! The Salvito Scarlet and Mauve, plus the Lip's series are also showing their first buds of an endless supply to come. The pale pink compact Astilbe Sprite is budding well now as are the summer flowering Allium Millenium. This very worthwhile allium is much tidier in habit and longer lasting than the spring flowering types, a proper impressive border plant.

A very popular designer plant Sanguisorba Tanna makes great ground cover and is now bursting with flower buds. Digitalis Arctic Fox Rose is a smart grower, much tidier than the purpurea types. Long deep green leaves and strong reasonably compact flower stems. Bud is now on show but they won't hang about so don't hold back.

The Garden Pinks are peaking in their bud production, no colour yet but loads of potential. We just have the one crop this spring so get them while you can. The Dianthus Scent First series smell delicious, compact and bushy they make a lovely set. Then we have our two scented old school varieties, Doris and Gran's Favourite, both a little taller and more typical of traditional cottage garden types.

Oxalis are looking great with the first flowers just opening. Two very different varieties, the purple leaved triangularis with its pale pink flowers and the two tone leaved Iron Cross with the deep pink blooms. Nemesia Wisley Vanilla is back on the list again, the second of several batches we have coming along. I obviously didn't make the first batch big enough as it only lasted a week with its heady vanilla scent. I'll try harder next year.

Summer is well on the way with Bidens Effrans Gold showing particularly well with a strong splash of gold flower. The next batches of other Bidens are ready, full pots and plenty of colour. Rhodanthemums are in bud, and several Coreopsis are ready to do their thing. Strong bushy Osteospermum Tresco Purple are now budding up nicely. More to come so no need to overdo it straight away.

Liatris spicata are not far away from colour with strong flower stems extending and buds on show. Digitalis Arctic Fox Rose is different but looking smart and just beginning to elongate in the stem ready to produce its first flower stem. Well on the way to flowering. Our massive Hosta range is looking great with leaves now unfurled and showing off nicely. Big range of leaf colours and sizes all in good looking condition with no slugs yet and no late frosts to mess up the early leaves. A nice range of the compact Helenium Hay Day series are just about ready and although I haven't marked them all as being in bud, there are a few showing.

Take care, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hairy sprinklers

Morning

We missed out a bit on the rain over the last week. We've had a splash but not much more, so we would like to request some more please. It doesn't seem to have dented plant sales, we were as busy this week as we were during the pre bank holiday week, which is great. With four days in the week not much else has got done so far, but the potting compost pile is quite small so it will only see us through a day's potting anyway so that works out ok. We have a fresh batch being delivered early next week so we don't need to panic for machine time or production space until then. I have already started to accumulate a few batches of plants that will need the longer term fertilisers in the next mix, to see them happily through the winter. It seems very early to be potting for next winter and spring but the sooner we start the bigger the plants will be when the new season gets underway.

In our constant drive to improve stuff we did an experiment with the overhead irrigation lines last weekend. We struggle to get an even distribution of water through the existing sprinklers over the whole bed and although once the plants are established in the pot, the sand-beds will even out the spread pretty well, during the early stages of growth patches in between sprinklers can dry out and cause big size variations. Sunny windy conditions particularly highlight this disappointing distribution and so I was determined to try some radical changes. The theory is to double the number of nozzles in the line, so that there are far more overlapping areas and nowhere is far from a nozzle or three. We are downsizing the output of each nozzle a bit by changing an internal part, which means the pressure in the line can be maintained, but the spread of each nozzle is very similar to the old one. The amount of water applied per line per minute is higher because of the extra nozzles, so the running time is lowered which should make programming easier to time. Tested out the theory over the holiday weekend by converting one line, fitting pressure gauges and checking the distribution patterns, and it worked a treat. I went ahead and converted another two lines, So that is three done out of 71 so not a big job really! I have now ordered 2,500  25mm PVC pipe joiners. a load of PVC pipe, plenty of glue and thousands of sprinkler parts and cable ties, installed a bench drill to drill the pipe accurately and avoid leaks, and special pipe cutters to make the thousands of clean square cuts needed to fit it all together. This will be an extra summer job, so as we clear the beds we install the updates, before potting onto the bed again for the winter. I suspect it will stretch well into the autumn although I am of course hoping for quicker. It is a lot of hours work, firstly making up the sprinkler inserts and then cutting and fitting to the existing pipes but well worth it if we can get more consistent crops, fewer losses and reduce summer stress levels. Loads of cake this week with Caroline's birthday on Wednesday, what a great day, dawn to dusk nursery and pizza for tea.

My big chocolate collection went down a treat, together with a bumper pack of gift wrapped Solpadine to soften the migraine afterwards! 

Availability list.

The increasingly popular less hardy Salvia varieties are showing great promise. Love and Wishes is well into bud, it just can't wait to flower! The Salvito Scarlet and Mauve, plus the Lip's series are also showing their first buds of the endless supply to come.

The Garden Pinks are peaking in their bud production, no colour yet but loads of potential. We just have the one crop this spring so get them while you can. The Dianthus Scent First series smell delicious, compact and bushy they make a lovely set. Then we have our two scented old school varieties, Doris and Gran's Favourite, both a little taller and more typical of traditional cottage garden types.

Oxalis are looking great with the first flowers just opening. Two very different varieties, the purple leaved triangularis with its pale pink flowers and the two tone leaved Iron Cross with the deep pink blooms.

Nemesia Wisley Vanilla is back on the list again, the second of several batches we have coming along. I obviously didn't make the first batch big enough as it only lasted a week with its heady vanilla scent. I'll try harder next year. Summer is well on the way with Bidens Effrans Gold showing particularly well with a strong splash of gold flower. Rhodanthemums are in bud, and several Coreopsis are ready to do their thing.

Strong bushy Osteospermum Tresco Purple are now budding up nicely. More to come so no need to overdo it straight away. Liatris spicata are a little way off colour but the flower stems are extending and buds just about showing. Digitalis Arctic Fox Rose is different but looking smart and just beginning to elongate in the stem ready to produce its first flower stem. Well on the way to flowering.

Our massive Hosta range is looking great with leaves now unfurled and showing off nicely. Big range of leaf colours and sizes all in good looking condition with no slugs yet and no late frosts to mess up the early leaves. A nice range of the compact Helenium Hay Day series are just about ready and although I haven't marked them all as being in bud, there are a few showing.

Take care, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hairy sensors

 

Busy, busy as we approach the last of the Spring bank holidays. Looks like the weather is going to break with some more very welcome rain. Let's hope it is encouraging rain with enough dry breaks for plenty of visits to the plant sales areas!

We don't have a despatch team in on Monday but we will be preparing the paperwork etc for orders as usual over the over the weekend and on Monday. We will still need to book any longer deliveries onto Bleach by noon on Monday so please do order in plenty of time if you are a long way from Winchester.

I was only thinking a couple of days ago I have had very few van troubles over the last couple of months and perhaps everything had settled down to behave nicely. Bad thought. The newest one through its toys out of the pram this week with both a low oil level and low brake level warning. The brake level is easy to check, you just look at the little reservoir under the bonnet it was fine, but the oil level, as I have mentioned before, is a little more tricky. In their wisdom Fiat opted for a sensor to show the oil level with no dipstick, well not in the engine anyway. It showed 2 bars out of 8, so we topped it up, no change. topped it up a bit more still no change. I didn't want to overfill so we left it at that. Two days later engine warning comes on, oil below minimum. The driver was miles away so we suggested buying a litre of oil and tipping it in. Now we get oil over full warning. After some garage advice we plodded on and got home ok, but had to send it in to be checked over. Fiat have altered the software somewhere and it turns out that our garage can no longer run diagnostics on the newer Fiats so it has to go back to a main dealer and there is a two week wait for a slot. Can't use it before then. Hey ho. Looking forward to getting the electric one, not a Fiat!

Solar setting up progressed a bit this week with a visit from the tech man who sorts out the data collected from the various parts of our electric system, the solar, battery, wind and overall consumption. He spent a long time measuring things to come to the conclusion that they won't play nicely together on their existing software. They have parameters set and if the data doesn't do what is expected it produces lots of error alerts. The main hiccup is the turbines which behave very differently from solar arrays. Turbines will use power to initially start up after a stoppage and also to run the control computer when there is no wind. Their system can't cope with a generating system that uses power, even if it only a tiny bit. Anyway he made a few adjustments, but a proper separate 'on the wall' meter for the solar output will be the first addition. 

Availability list.

The increasingly popular less hardy Salvia varieties are showing great promise. Love and Wishes is well into bud, it just can't wait to flower! The Salvito Scarlet and Mauve, plus the Lip's series are also showing the first buds of the endless supply to come.

The Garden Pinks are peaking in their bud production, no colour yet but loads of potential. We just have the one crop this spring so get them while you can. The Dianthus Scent First series smell delicious, compact and bushy they make a lovely set. Then we have our two scented old school varieties, Doris and Gran's Favourite, both a little taller and more typical of traditional cottage garden types.

Oxalis are looking great with the first flowers just opening. Two very different varieties, the purple leaved triangularis with its pale pink flowers and the two tone leaved Iron Cross with the deep pink blooms.

Nemesia Wisley Vanilla is back on the list again, the second of several batches we have coming along. I obviously didn't make the first batch big enough as it only lasted a week. I'll try harder next year.

Summer is well on the way with Bidens Effrans Gold showing particularly well with a strong splash of gold flower.

Rhodanthemums are in bud, and several Coreopsis are ready to do their thing.

Strong bushy Osteospermum Tresco Purple are now budding up nicely. More to come so no need to overdo it straight away. We have a few small batches of fresh Erysimums now in bud again, with glimpses of colour, but they will be gone in a flash. Liatris spicata are a little way off colour but the flower stems are extending and buds just about showing.

The Erigeron Sea Breeze Pink are desperate to start their long flower displays but we keep selling them just as they hint at budding up! Great garden plants.

A small number of the ever popular Digitalis purpurea are back for a couple of weeks, just a few trays I put through the new seeder machine. Digitalis Arctic Fox Rose is different but looking smart and just beginning to elongate in the stem ready to produce its first flower stem. Not really in bud yet but well on the way.

Our massive Hosta range is looking great with leaves now unfurled and showing off nicely. Big range of leaf colours and sizes all in good looking condition with no slugs yet and no late frosts to mess up the early leaves.

A nice range of the compact Helenium Hay Day series are just about ready and although I haven't marked them as being in bud, there are a few showing.

Take care, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.