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.