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.