Hairy amphibians

 

Hi 

Still a bit cold and damp,  but it is January so we shouldn’t really complain too much. Hopefully the ground  water levels will have  recovered after last year’s dry spring and summer. We are definitely seeing signs of some fresh growth on the more confident hardy plants, in both the perennial and herb ranges, which does make  me think the madness of spring sales is not far away. The bank will be keen  to see that take off on the sales and income front as we continue to recover from my overspending last year on more nursery investments and improvements.

The smaller scale investment this winter, of the new IT and data  storage system, continues to throw up more practical challenges and more costs this week,  as we find bit’s that don’t work as they did before, resulting in the purchase of new software and extra subscriptions. Last week’s availability email was missing the ‘Word version’ due to a software issue but that was one we did manage to cure this week after a few long phone calls to the support desk and downloading £15 worth of program. At last, some good value spending! We have  had our tail feathers clipped with the loading of new software, as the ‘IT administrator’ role has been taken  away from us by the tech support team,  so that we don’t mess it all up by downloading something silly. Sensible really, as my grip on reality is getting looser.

We have  been doing a bit more site maintenance this week, just getting things tidied up a bit before the rush. We circumnavigated the site repairing the holes in the rabbit netting trying to slow up the comings and going of the rabbits,hares and the odd muntjak deer.  Two breaches were discovered, one created by the farm’s tractor mounted hedge cutter (no complaints, it’s a cheap option for us to get the boundaries trimmed), and the other was a reopening of an old repair by some critter pushing its way back through  the original hole. The narrow animal path was plain to see and the hole not huge, but definitely one to return to and check  later in the year.

It’s coming up to the frog spawning season so we had a tidy up in and around the main pond so that they can find the water to do their stuff. We kept is subtle, so we don’t frighten them off, but it definitely looks more inviting now than earlier, if you were looking to frolic in a pond in January! With three  ponds around the nursery we get to benefit from the successful breeding of frogs, toads and newts through  the season, we are always finding them tucked  under  the pots and trays as we work round the site. Most of the team  get quite excited by these discoveries, although not always positively!

Summary of the improvements to shelf life for 2026

We are introducing three  changes this season in how we prepare our plants for delivery to our lovely retailers. We know some sites struggle to maintain the quality of our plants once  they arrive on the retail plant sales areas. Peat-free compost mixes struggle to hold onto as much water as peat  and also don't grip the nutrients as tightly either. When added to the extra breathability of our Hairy Pots, quicker drying out can be an issue, especially if the ideal of 'little and often' applications of water is not a practical option. When the plants dry out they then tend to get over watered, which flushes out the available nutrients resulting in premature deterioration in condition. To help reduce these stresses and provide a longer lasting 'looking good' shelf life we are doing the following;

1/ Adding a reusable, recycled wool capillary mat in the bottom of each tray which will hold onto extra water for the plants to take up. These are expensive and will need to be returned for reuse with the boxes.

2/ Adding extra wetting agent at despatch to allow the compost to hold onto more water and rewet more easily if dry.

3/ Adding a dose of organic slow release feed as a top dressing to compensate for any leaching of nutrients. Do your 2026 retail prices need changing?

We have  increased our cost prices for 2026 by just 5p per pot, which is a little under  2%, to partially cover our ever increasing costs. If you have  your stock pre-priced by ourselves, perhaps now would be a good time to let us know any changes you would like to make  for the coming season. We can then adjust our records accordingly and get started on printing the correct price labels in advance of the fast approaching madness of those spring sales.

Availability list.

The first spring bulbs are here  and a few are already showing their first buds. Not much in the way of colour but it won't be long. Two of the hoop-petticoat Narcissus have  bud, White Petticoat and the pale lemon yellow Julia Jane, both are crackers. Other compact Narcissus starting to show bud are Jet Fire and the Tete A Tete.

There  are two Scilla showing bud and a bit of colour, so spring must be coming up fast! There  are three  Pulmonaria varieties in tight bud but close to colour, We don’t have  much Blue Ensign left but plenty of the other two at the moment. Several Erysimum varieties are already showing bud and the odd flash of colour and are standing up well after several hard frosts we have  seen here.

Cyclamen coum are coming on quickly. This selection is a champion winter performer, very hardy and just keeps on flowering, usually from November through to March and April.

Seasonal best wishes from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

More hairy tech

Hi.

What a joyful week that was. Wall to wall rain and wind made everything very challenging. It was so dark first thing in the morning, we had to delay picking up the orders until it was light enough to see clearly what was being selected. On the plus side the wind turbines have been bowling along, generating plenty of excess power to send back into the grid. We have had momentary glimpses of brightness which give a taste of spring potential, so we are hopeful there will still be a few plant sales out there somewhere.

Work on the nursery continues apace whatever the weather and the overwinter plant cutting back and mulching is coming close to an end, perfect timing for the anticipated upturn in sales volumes (fingers crossed). Most of the team are out there in the unheated tunnels beavering away so another 2 or 3 weeks and we should be ready. 

Big turmoil this week with the upgrade to our IT system. A more up to date system, and a secure setup were the key attractions. We had been lagging behind on software programs, as I tried to resist setting up multiple subscription services but the time has come to drag myself into the new way of doing stuff. Hopefully you may notice more user-friendly versions of Word and Excel appearing on our weekly availability updates and we should see fewer file reading issues on the various formats that return to us as orders.

Monday saw the bulk of the IT installation done and the rest of the week has been spent trying to sort out multiple issues as they have arisen. The support desk has been great at providing quick fixes, although the monthly subscription rates have already gone up, because MS One Drive cloud storage is not quite what I thought it was! It gives us a massive volume of storage and backs up most stuff as you go through the day, so there is little chance of losing potentially precious data. The storage of data and computers is nearly all offsite now, so it makes us safe from being left in the lurch if there is an overnight fire or break-in. However, the nursery program which handles all the plant growing and order processing can’t be saved to One Drive because it needs scheduling to be done once or twice a day rather than continually. I have now learnt that One Drive can’t do this, so we must subscribe to another cloud, running a different type of backup. Ace.

I was anxious that we broke 365 Outlook which threw a wobbly as soon as we switched over to it and was intermittently bouncing emails back to us. The tech team have spent 3 days trying to sort it out, only to see that Microsoft announced this morning that they had server issues and it wasn’t just us. It is still happening but at least I don’t feel guilty about it now!

Summary of the improvements to shelf life for 2026

We are introducing three changes this season in how we prepare our plants for delivery to our lovely retailers. We know some sites struggle to maintain the quality of our plants once they arrive on the retail plant sales areas. Peat-free compost mixes struggle to hold onto as much water as peat and also don't grip the nutrients as tightly either. When added to the extra breathability of our Hairy Pots, quicker drying out can be an issue, especially if the ideal of 'little and often' applications of water is not a practical option. When the plants dry out they then tend to get over watered which flushes out the available nutrients resulting in premature deterioration in condition. To help reduce these stresses and provide a longer lasting 'looking good' shelf life we are doing the following;

1/ Adding a reusable, recycled wool capillary mat in the bottom of each tray which will hold onto extra water for the plants to take up. These are expensive and will need to be returned for reuse with the boxes.

2/ Adding extra wetting agent at despatch to allow the compost to hold onto more water and rewet more easily if dry.

3/ Adding a dose of organic slow-release feed as a top dressing to compensate for any leaching of nutrients.

Do your 2026 retail prices need changing?

We have increased our cost prices for 2026 by just 5p per pot, which is a little under 2%, to partially cover our ever-increasing costs. If you have your stock pre-priced by ourselves, perhaps now would be a good time to let us know any changes you would like to make for the coming season. We can then adjust our records accordingly and get started on printing the correct price labels in advance of the fast-approaching madness of those spring sales.

Availability list.

Cyclamen coum are coming on quickly. This selection is a champion winter performer, very hardy and just keeps on flowering, usually from November through to March and April. 

Some Erysimum varieties are already showing bud and the odd flash of colour, but this has been brought on by the mild winter so far. They are all pretty tough and are standing well against the frosts so far.

The first spring bulbs are here, and a few are already showing their first buds. Not much in the way of colour but it won't be long. Two of the hoop-petticoat Narcissus have bud, White Petticoat and the pale lemon-yellow Julia Jane, both are crackers.

Best wishes from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

Hairy tech hopes

Hi.

Nice to see the back of the cold snap, although I know some of you suffered from wind and a few flooding issues over the last week. Still ploughing through those root vegetables! We were lucky this time and missed the worst of all of it, although the amount of surface water washing about on Thursday was pretty significant.

Things here are beginning to wake up with a small flurry of orders this week, waking us up from our winter slumber. It's about now I start to panic that we aren't actually quite ready for spring just yet. All those overwinter sales preparation jobs I thought we had plenty of time for are now in demand. To be fair I think we are ok for a few weeks, we have a little of everything ready now (POS boards, price labels, boxes, capillary mats, plant labels etc), but we will need to push on now to get all those things ship-shape and totally pre-prepared for when all hell breaks loose and orders start flying in.

Monday should see our annual label delivery arrive, which will need decanting from the pallets and filing away in their appropriate boxes. It's a big one this year with over 500,000 labels to find a home for, it might take a day or two.

Tension is already building for a major change which is also happening in the office on Monday. We are having some new computer kit installed and the whole data storage system changed to hiding it all in the clouds, or something like that. In theory it should make everything more flexible, accessible and much more secure. which would be a major improvement on the current system. The other big thing that will change is that we will lose our old MS Office suite in favour of the subscription based MS 365, which should bring us more up to date on file production and readability etc and of course cost more! The big issue for us oldies, is how much things have changed since we last updated and whether we will be able to find our way around the programs. Please bear with us if things go a bit pear-shaped for a few days!

Our old system works very nicely as it is, with a myriad of other bits of kit and old programs chugging away in the background, so this is another area of concern with the changeover. The many printers and multiple printer settings we have installed, on each current computer, for all the different printing tasks and materials we use, is finely tuned at the moment, what position it will be in by Monday afternoon we will have to wait and see.

This is all being overseen by a very confident young company with very youthful experts, one of which will be on site all day. Let's hope their confidence is justified, although history here is not on their side, but you never know, fingers crossed it will be a seamless and successful changeover. What is that flying by over there?

Summary of the improvements to shelf life for 2026

We are introducing three changes this season in how we prepare our plants for delivery to our lovely retailers. We know some sites struggle to maintain the quality of our plants once they arrive on the retail plant sales areas. The plants thrive over long periods when kept here on the nursery, the irrigation is pretty accurate and applied in a timely manner in the correct volumes, and the nutrition levels are set to give long lasting healthy growth. But once we set them free, the real world isn't always so kind to them. Peat-free compost mixes struggle to hold onto as much water as peat and also don't grip the nutrients as tightly either. When added to the extra breathability of our Hairy Pots, quicker drying out can be an issue, especially if the ideal of 'little and often' applications of water is not a practical option. When the plants dry out they then tend to get over watered which flushes out the available nutrients resulting in premature deterioration in condition. To help reduce these stresses and provide a longer lasting 'looking good' shelf life we are doing the following;

1/ Adding a reusable, recycled wool capillary mat in the bottom of each tray which will hold onto extra water for the plants to take up. These are expensive and will need to be returned for reuse with the boxes.

2/ Adding extra wetting agent at despatch to allow the compost to hold onto more water and rewet more easily if dry.

3/ Adding a dose of organic slow release feed as a top dressing to compensate for any leaching of nutrients. Do your 2026 retail prices need changing?

We have increased our cost prices for 2026 by just 5p per pot, which is a little under 2%, to partially cover our ever increasing costs. If you have your stock pre-priced by ourselves, perhaps now would be a good time to let us know any changes you would like to make for the coming season. We can then adjust our records accordingly and get started on printing the correct price labels in advance of the fast approaching madness of those spring sales.

Availability list.

Cyclamen coum are coming on quickly. This selection is a champion winter performer, very hardy and just keeps on flowering, usually from November through to March and April.

Some Erysimum varieties are already showing bud and the odd flash of colour but this has been brought on by the mild winter so far. They are all pretty tough and are standing well against the frosts so far.

The first spring bulbs are here and a few are already showing their first buds. Not much in the way of colour but it won't be long. Two of the hoop-petticoat Narcissus have bud, White Petticoat and the pale lemon yellow Julia Jane, both are crackers. 

Seasonal best wishes from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hairy turbines

Hi.

A big weather week around the UK with snow, rain and wind aplenty. We were very lucky to be in an area avoiding all the main weather warnings. We had one night of light snow and one of -8C, which is the coldest here for a couple of years at least. We haven't yet noticed much cold damage, despite the plants looking very sad for a few hours until they thawed out. Next week looks much warmer if a little damp, not quite sure which I prefer, warmth seems quite attractive when your fingers hurt so much in the cold, but the lack of sun when it's very grey doesn't exactly fill you with vim and vigour.

I forgot to mention last week Caroline's exciting Christmas trip out. If you can remember as far back as Christmas Day it was pretty stormy and at 03.00 we had a short power cut during strong winds, and as a result, one of the turbines threw a wing tip. With the wind forecast to blow for several days that was a potential loss of significant income, so I was fairly keen to get the tip reset. It was way too windy on Christmas day itself, when you are perched on a ladder 15m up in the air you (as in Caroline you understand, not me!) feel pretty exposed even with a full multi-anchored safety harness on. 

The weather forecast was spot on when it predicted an early Boxing Day lull in wind speed and up she went, under expert guidance from the ground crew (this is where I step in). It was close to freezing, so a good job there was only one tip to reset, as the wind chill was quick to do its thing.20 minutes later and all was completed, A quick warming hug. a hot chocolate and it was back to more traditional Christmas holiday fun.

The production of our 12,000 new little capillary mats for the marketing trays, came to a grinding halt this week with the demise of our rotary cutter. It probably wasn't the best purchasing decision I have ever made, although I have made a lot worse. It worked a treat to start with and proved it was the right type of tool for the job, but it was a bit of a dodgy looking make and design, and after just a few weeks it coughed and spluttered before giving up completely. I have now sourced two battery operated ones of a more respected make, which arrived this afternoon. They work a treat, even better than the previous one, and slice through the mat like butter. There is no cable to get in the way and the blade is much better protected from any stray fingers etc. Touch wood they last a bit longer this time, the cutter that is, not the fingers. Summary of the improvements to shelf life for 2026

We are introducing three major changes next year in how we prepare our plants for delivery to our lovely retailers. We are aware that some sites struggle to maintain the quality of our plants once they arrive on the retail plant sales areas. The plants thrive over long periods when kept here on the nursery, the irrigation is pretty accurate and applied in a timely manner in the correct volumes, and the nutrition levels are set to give long lasting healthy growth. But once we set them free, the real world isn't always so kind to them. As I have mentioned previously peat-free compost mixes struggle to hold onto as much water as peat and also don't grip the nutrients as tightly either. When added to the extra breathability of our Hairy Pots, quicker drying out can be an issue, especially if the ideal of 'little and often' applications of water is not a practical option. When the plants dry out they then tend to get over watered which flushes out the available nutrients resulting in premature deterioration in condition. To help reduce these stresses and provide a longer lasting 'looking good' shelf life we are doing the following;

1/ Adding a reusable, recycled wool capillary mat in the bottom of each tray which will hold onto extra water for the plants to take up. These are expensive and will need to be returned for reuse with the boxes.

2/ Adding extra wetting agent at despatch to allow the compost to hold onto more water and rewet more easily if dry.

3/ Adding a dose of organic slow release feed as a top dressing to compensate for any leaching of nutrients.

It will be interesting to see what a difference these measures will take over the coming season, hopefully it will lead to longer lasting displays and lead to more sales for all.

Do your 2026 retail prices need changing?

We have increased our cost prices for 2026 by just 5p per pot, which is a little under 2%, to partially cover our ever increasing costs. If you have your stock pre-priced by ourselves, perhaps now would be a good time to let us know any changes you would like to make for the coming season. We can then adjust our records accordingly and get started on printing the correct price labels in advance of the fast approaching madness of those spring sales.

Availability list.

The winter flowering Helleborus Christmas Carol is showing some bud already and H. orientalis Halcyon Early Red is looking really good with bud and some red/purple colour showing too.

Cyclamen coum are coming on quickly. This selection is a champion winter performer, very hardy and just keeps on flowering, usually from November through to March and April.

Some Erysimum varieties are already showing bud and the odd flash of colour but this has been brought on by the mild winter so far. They are all pretty tough and are standing well against the frosts so far.

The first spring bulbs are here and a few are already showing their first buds. Not much in the way of colour but it won't be long. Two of the hoop-petticoat Narcissus have bud, White Petticoat and the pale lemon yellow Julia Jane, both are crackers. 

Seasonal best wishes from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hairy New Year

Hi.

I hope you all had a great Christmas break. It was nice to have a few days off even if it all seemed to pass by so quickly. A rotation of visiting and hosting various groups of family and friends whirled by, with lots of fun and laughs and a tear or two for those not with us this time round. We set ourselves a challenge before Christmas to clear the 'dining room' and upstairs office in order to accommodate all the beds needed. Both had become dumping grounds for various stuff which couldn't find another home and it us took three weekends to find both floors again. The loft had to be thinned out for all the excess from the office to be relocated, and then the dining room excess was thinned before relocating the remaining treasures into the new spare space in the office. Finding lots of old photos, wage slips and other memorabilia did delay the process somewhat and also make us both feel a bit ancient! Still, on the bright side, I was able to put together my 4 lane Scalextric track in the dining room and reconstruct the four cars necessary to run some great races for the 50+ year old children who visited over the break.

Winter seems to have arrived at last. No snow here just yet but it looks like we might get a flurry or two early next week. We are putting the final touches together to be ready for the upcoming plant sales season. This year's label delivery should be delivered late next week or early the following, and I hope to have the new capillary mats cut very soon, together with this year's batches of wooden POS boards and latex notices all printed and treated. Most of this winters marketing box production and repairs are complete, just waiting on another small wood delivery to finish those off. Weather permitting, in a couple of weeks time I will be looking to start the first seed sowing sessions to germinate under the heat and LED lights in the propagation tunnel, getting us off to a quick start in the spring, and trying to cover the gap that can appear between the overwintered herb stock and the spring potted batches.

Summary of the improvements to shelf life for 2026

We are introducing three major changes next year in how we prepare our plants for delivery to our lovely retailers. We are aware that some sites struggle to maintain the quality of our plants once they arrive on the retail plant sales areas. The plants thrive over long periods when kept here on the nursery, the irrigation is pretty accurate and applied in a timely manner in the correct volumes, and the nutrition levels are set to give long lasting healthy growth. But once we set them free, the real world isn't always so kind to them. As I have mentioned previously peat-free compost mixes struggle to hold onto as much water as peat and also don't grip the nutrients as tightly either. When added to the extra breathability of our Hairy Pots, quicker drying out can be an issue, especially if the ideal of 'little and often' applications of water is not a practical option. When the plants dry out they then tend to get over watered which flushes out the available nutrients resulting in premature deterioration in condition. To help reduce these stresses and provide a longer lasting 'looking good' shelf life we are doing the following;

1/ Adding a reusable, recycled wool capillary mat in the bottom of each tray which will hold onto extra water for the plants to take up. These are expensive and will need to be returned for reuse with the boxes.

2/ Adding extra wetting agent at despatch to allow the compost to hold onto more water and rewet more easily if dry.

3/ Adding a dose of organic slow release feed as a top dressing to compensate for any leaching of nutrients.

It will be interesting to see what a difference these measures will take over the coming season, hopefully it will lead to more sales all round.

Prices for 2026.

As all years seem to be, it's been a challenging one, with one big increase in particular adding to our costs, on top of all the usual inflation+ pressures on virtually all materials and young plant costs. I know it's the same for everyone, but the 10% addition to labour costs, made up of the minimum wage increases and higher NI payments, has hit us hard. Labour is far and away our biggest cost and although we try to be more efficient year on year, it is impossible to keep pace with such big changes. We have increased prices by just 5p per pot, which is a little under 2%.

Availability list.

The winter flowering Helleborus Christmas Carol is showing some bud already and H. orientalis Halcyon Early Red is looking really good with bud and some red/purple colour showing too.

Cyclamen coum are coming on quickly. A winter and spring flowering form, the first few flowers are already showing with heaps more to come over the coming months. This selection is a champion winter performer, very hardy and just keeps on endlessly flowering, usually from November through to March and April.

Some Erysimum varieties are already showing bud and the odd flash of colour but this has been brought on by the mild winter so far. They may take a slight backward step if it gets properly cold, but they are all pretty tough and are standing well against the frosts so far.

The first spring bulbs are here and a few are already showing their first buds. Not much in the way of colour but it won't be long. Two of the hoop-petticoat Narcissus have bud, White Petticoat and the pale lemon yellow Julia Jane, both are crackers. 

Seasonal best wishes from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hairy Christmas!

Hi

Santa has come early, leaving us with a large pallet of organic DCM top dressing fertiliser, 10 pallets of capillary matting, enough for 12,000 boxes, and several containers of wetting agent, all in preparation for our 2026 gift to all our retailers, a longer lasting shelf life for your Hairy Pots. Unfortunately he has left a hefty invoice or two and was too busy to cut up the matting into the small mats we need. We are however now ready to roll in the New Year, with one pallet of 1,200 mats already cut up with hopefully another one on the cards for next week.

The mat cutting itself isn't too bad, the rotary cutter I bought slices through beautifully, although I am going to have to invest in some knee pads. The first 3 cuts are along the full length of the 25m rolls, cutting the big roll into tray width mini rolls and this is all done on the concrete floor. I was hoping the matting was cushioned enough to make it comfortable crawling and cutting, and although I managed it for most of the day, my knees were distinctly purple when the trousers descended at bedtime. Once cut into mini rolls they mount on a giant toilet roll holder we knocked up on a bench top, and unroll them at a comfortable height for the final cuts. Only 9 more pallets to go!

I hope all your Christmas budgets and plans have all worked out ok, it has certainly been another up and down period with wild weather patterns and mixed economic news, but hopefully things are looking a bit brighter for the coming year. Time will tell. We are certainly looking forward to another exciting year with a few changes on the cards over next few months but this time without spending too much of the pension fund! Last winter's investments like the solar and battery installation are going well, the seed sowing kit promises extra production efficiency next year and I can't find too much more to spend on upgrading the electrics. The overdraft was secured for the winter and next season this week and the bank manager was certainly pleased that I was reigning back a bit. Just a computer upgrade to do before the season starts in earnest and what could possibly go wrong with that?

Have a great Christmas and be cool.

Summary of the improvements to shelf life for 2026

We are introducing three major changes next year in how we prepare our plants for delivery to retailers. We are aware that some sites struggle to maintain the quality of our plants once they arrive on the retail plant sales areas. The plants thrive over long periods when kept here on the nursery, the irrigation is pretty accurate and applied in a timely manner in the correct volumes, and the nutrition levels are set to give long lasting healthy growth. But once we set them free, the real world isn't always so kind to them. As I have mentioned previously peat-free compost mixes struggle to hold onto as much water as peat and also don't grip the nutrients as tightly either. When added to the extra breathability of our Hairy Pots, quicker drying out can be an issue, especially if the ideal of 'little and often' applications of water is not a practical option. When the plants dry out they then tend to get over watered which flushes out the available nutrients resulting in premature deterioration in condition. To help reduce these stresses and provide a longer lasting 'looking good' shelf life we are doing the following;

1/ Adding a reusable, recycled wool capillary mat in the bottom of each tray which will hold onto extra water for the plants to take up. These are expensive and will need to be returned for reuse with the boxes.

2/ Adding extra wetting agent at despatch to allow the compost to hold onto more water and rewet more easily if dry.

3/ Adding a dose of organic slow release feed as a top dressing to compensate for any leaching of nutrients.

It will be interesting to see what a difference these measures will take over the coming season, hopefully it will lead to more sales all round.

Prices for 2026.

As all years seem to be, it's been a challenging one, with one big increase in particular adding to our costs, on top of all the usual inflation+ pressures on virtually all materials and young plant costs. I know it's the same for everyone, but the 10% addition to labour costs, made up of the minimum wage increases and higher NI payments, has hit us hard. Labour is far and away our biggest cost and although we try to be more efficient year on year, it is impossible to keep pace with such big changes. We have increased prices by just 5p per pot, which is a little under 2%.

Availability list.

Get ready for winter flowers by stocking up on our Helleborus range. Christmas Carol is showing some bud already and H. orientalis Halcyon Early Red is looking really good with bud and some red colour showing too.

Cyclamen coum are coming on quickly. A winter and spring flowering form, the first few flowers are already showing with heaps more to come over the coming months. This selection is a champion winter performer, very hardy and just keeps on endlessly flowering, usually from November through to March and April.

Some Erysimum varieties are already showing bud and the odd flash of colour but this has been brought on by the mild winter so far. They may take a slight backward step if it gets properly cold, but they are all pretty tough. Spring bulbs are just around the corner and should make the list in the early in the New Year.

Seasonal best wishes from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Hairy cheer

 

Hi 

The rain is pattering on the roof as I type this, not great for festive cheer and fevered seasonal shopping, but hopefully it won't impact your own Christmas displays and sales too much. We had our first mince pies this week and put up our very modest mess room tree and the same tatty decorations which appear every year. Sometimes it's not the trendy colour scheme that matters it's the warmth and familiarity of getting out the same set of second-hand garlands and baubles to set the scene. Our own tree is also up but not quite decorated yet. The lights failed and I'm awaiting a fresh set before that gets done, but I have put a picture of it from a previous year on the cover of our Mail Chimp emails. You won't believe it but I made this myself, or maybe you would! A few old wooden venetian blind slats and some 2 x 2 was all it took and the homemade mini paper chains top it all off. We've had the same tree since 2008 and the paper chains I must have knocked up about three years prior to that, as I have pictures of those on the MK1 version of the wooden tree where I screwed pieces of dormant beech hedge branches to another piece of 2 x 2. That one didn't last as well as MK2.

Great trip up to New Leaf Nurseries with our reinvigorated NBIS group this week. Good attendance and plenty of new ideas to cherry pick and bring home, as well as catching up with the general mood of growers from across the ornamental sector. I can't say it was bubbling with huge anticipation of mega sales and profitability, but everyone was definitely looking forward with a positive hat on despite horror stories of banks letting long term customers down, with the comment by one bank manager that banks weren't in the business of taking risks. So it's the same old story; The bank is will lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain. The other scary topic of conversation was the increasing costs of labour and how dependant we all are on it. I just had an email from the NFU reporting that when the rise comes in next April (4.1% increase) the minimum wage rates will have increased by 52% in five years which I struggled to believe, however I have checked our figures and we are certainly at about 50% over that period, no wonder margins have been getting harder to find when this is our biggest single production cost.

New improvements to shelf life for 2026

We are introducing three major changes next year to how we prepare our plants for delivery to retailers. We are aware that some sites do struggle to maintain the quality of our plants once they arrive on the retail plant sales areas. The plants thrive when kept here on the nursery over long periods, the irrigation is pretty accurate and applied in a timely manner in the correct volumes, and the nutrition levels are set to give long lasting healthy growth. But once we set them free the real world isn't always so kind to them. As I mentioned last week peat-free compost mixes struggle to hold onto as much water as peat and also don't grip the nutrients as tightly either. When added to the extra breathability of our Hairy Pots, quicker drying out can be an issue, especially if the ideal of 'little and often' applications of water is not a practical option. When the plants dry out they then tend to get over watered which flushes out the available nutrients resulting in premature deterioration in condition. To help reduce these stresses and provide a longer lasting 'looking good' shelf life we are doing the following;

1/ Adding a reusable, recycled wool capillary mat in the bottom of each tray which will hold onto extra water for the plants to take up. These are expensive and will need to be returned for reuse with the boxes.

2/ Adding extra wetting agent at despatch to allow the compost to hold onto more water and rewet more easily if dry.

3/ Adding a dose of organic slow release feed as a top dressing to compensate for any leaching of nutrients.

It will be interesting to see what a difference these measures will take over the coming season, hopefully it will lead to more sales all round.

Prices for 2026.

As all years seem to be, it's been a challenging one, with one big increase in particular adding to our costs, on top of all the usual inflation+ pressures on virtually all materials and young plant costs. I know it's the same for everyone, but the 10% addition to labour costs, made up of the minimum wage increases and higher NI payments, has hit us hard. Labour is far and away our biggest cost and although we try to be more efficient year on year, it is impossible to keep pace with such big changes. As optimistic as ever, we have increased prices by just 5p per pot, which is a little under 2%, possibly not enough, but it is what we believe to be an acceptable change. We are hoping that even more improvements in productivity, together with growing sales volumes, will help us maintain a sustainable margin, but we will have to review the position again in 12 months time.

Availability list.

Get ready for winter flowers by planting our Helleborus range now. Christmas Carol is showing some bud already and H. orientalis Halcyon Early Red is looking really good with bud and some red colour showing too.

Cyclamen coum are coming on quickly. A winter and spring flowering form, the first few flowers are already showing with heaps more to come over the coming months. This selection is a champion winter performer, very hardy and just keeps on endlessly flowering, usually from November through to March and April.

Take care, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.