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.