Triumph! Computer security upgrade successfully sorted last week but as is the way with all messing about with computers it’s never that simple. The instant I had finished we had a huge Windows 7 update which loaded the latest Internet Explorer 9. It took ages to download and completely messed up any internet browsing, within 30 seconds or so it would freeze and refresh. Naturally I assumed it was a cock-up on my part with the security update but after a bit of investigation it was the new IE9 upgrade. It automatically sets itself up for the very latest video software which of course we don’t have and can’t upgrade with a compatible driver despite the computers only being a couple of years old. Anyway by ticking the right box in ‘internet tools + advanced’ we sorted it. Another productive few hours!
Caroline came back down to earth last week, quite literally. She did her tandem skydive which she got as a birthday present from a load of ‘friends’ a few months ago. I wasn’t too worried as I had topped up the life insurance and I know she loves that sort of thing, about as much as I hate it. It hit the spot and the ‘money off your next jump’ voucher is now burning a hole in her pocket so I doubt it will be long before she has another go.
Sad news this week that the Woking Nursery Show is no more. We have been exhibiting there for a very long time and it was always a productive and lovely day out for us, but the competition from the new HTA National Plant Fair just a couple of weeks before was just too much to bear and perhaps it was time to move on. It will be interesting to see how the shows get on over the next few years, particularly the national ones especially when I think things are likely to turn more in favour of more local supply with increasing demand for local produce, transport costs and possible future plant movement restrictions. I’m not 100% sure of our future strategy on the show front, we have now lost both of the shows we attended this year but it looks at the moment that the favourite option may be to buy a pig and eat it! As a sideline we might invite a few folk to come and see what we are up to at the same time. We have done quite a few tours already with local interest groups, nursery visits and students and we seem to have built up quite a variety of different things to show, there is all the hairy stuff, production facilities micro-prop lab, sustainability stuff and the turbines and nearly all the people who come have managed to stay awake for most of the time. Perhaps one in early February and another in the summer, we’ll see. Mind you by the time we get too February we might be down to cabbage soup rather than suckling pig!
With perfect timing through our contacts in Plato Sustain we had a very entertaining & productive visit from a marketing strategist from URS Scott Wilson who has done us a quick review of all things hairy. I am always a bit sceptical about consultants especially when they are not horticulturaly orientated but she was brilliant, very sharp, practical and astute. We discussed all sorts of options from very short term ideas on a shoestring budget to longer term business strategies. It was certainly a great way of bringing some of our ideas into sharper focus and finding practical ways of bringing those ideas into reality. Watch this space!
Eco News
The local paper caught up with us this week with a call asking if the turbines were up yet. The reporter lives in Winchester but such is the uproar created by their erection that he hadn’t realized that they had been up for over three months. It won’t be in until next week (Hampshire Chronicle) but hopefully it will get a sensible reaction and not stir up too many negative thoughts. The photographer came in on Wednesday to take some pictures and I look great, so that’s ok.
I have been doing a bit of internet research on UK average monthly wind speeds this week to try and get a more accurate idea of how the turbines are fairing. It will still need a long term review for sensible analysis but it looks ok so far. I found a couple of graphs for UK winds over the last 21 and 34 years and they gave me the percentages to adjust the annual estimate we were given by the turbine installers. By the end of September we were 2.88% under estimate, although if I adjusted for the time one turbine was out of action with a set up problem it would have been 3% up. So far in October we are fractionally up but it is so tight that a day of light or heavy wind could swing it one way of the other.
The recent wooden tray returns have gone pretty well, we still are a few short, but looking back over the three seasons we have been using them we have achieved a return rate of 97.5% which is brilliant. Well done everyone, especially those who have achieved a 100% return of which there are many.
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
Sunday, 16 October 2011
Monday, 10 October 2011
Back to autumn which is good news for turbine production and my body. Might have been a bit over optimistic playing hockey twice last weekend in all that heat as it took me a while to get upright on Monday, in fact it wasn’t until Thursday that I felt I could give it another go. Better day yesterday with perfect cool weather and a more forgiving rubbery pitch and a 7-0 win, we won’t talk about last week’s results. Most parts are moving ok this morning, well, as many parts as usual anyway. Shame about the England performances this weekend, on the football and rugby pitches, but there you go, good job it’s only a game and played for fun.
We had another very full week again, I keep thinking we will get a quiet week but there seems to be so much going on Monday saw my last official PLATO Sustain meeting and a résumé of all the things we had all done over two years which was a surprising amount. The timing seems to have been perfect for those of us who stuck the course (9 out of 13) with sustainability coming much more to the fore in businesses of all sizes. OK I know some may only be playing lip service to it at the moment but those of us who are embracing it are seeing some valuable returns already with plenty more to come. We are going to continue our local group on a self financed quarterly basis, meeting up at each other’s premises to try to keep up the momentum and I’m looking forward to the first one at a rubber mouldings manufacturer!
The changing weather prompted some pre-winter repairs this week which seem to have gone really well. The lab growth room and mess room roof’s had sprung a few leaks where the covers had split. The mess room we re-sheeted which looks good and the growth room we repaired with some very expensive but hopefully effective tape (Eternabond). We have tried repairing this roof before with bituminous stuff, but it has dried and split again, the tape looks much more suited to the job was quite easy to apply. What did we do before the internet!
Had a trip to the solicitors to sort out the official lease paperwork for the turbine sites which are on the field above the nursery. 28 pages of legal stuff and a bill larger than the rent for 20 years! Everything odd ‘little’ job done for this project costs another couple of thousand, whether it’s bat survey, archaeologists, solicitors, planning stuff, servicing contracts, electric extras. If only we could charge these labour rates for our skills in horticulture, still at least we are not bitter, we do have such a lovely lifestyle after all!
It is that frustrating time of year when our computer security software comes up for renewal. Every year what should be a simple renewal of licensing turns into a long winded, hair pulling cock-up. That’s the advantage of having me as the IT department! I got a reminder from Symantec that it was coming up to renewal time and they gave me a renewal code number to use. Looks easy and if you have a domestic version or have a business in the USA or Canada it is, but in the UK you have to buy it through a reseller. Went to the company who sold it to us last year, sorry we don’t do renewals, searched the internet for the UK and no obvious candidates, it was easier and cheaper to buy from new again. Bought it and tried to load it, slow start as no instructions as to what to do until one of the 6 disc’s supplied goes in (no indication of which one first). Then have to stop loading to remove the old version first. Remove that then try again, window appears to say that this version won’t load onto Windows 7, hurrah guess what we have. Spend the rest of the morning finding and reloading the old version as
we have now have no protection on our main computer. Then I find out that I can load the new one onto W7 if I use another loading method. I’ve decided to take a break from this and will try again tonight, could be a long one.
Eco News
The turbines have been productive this week and are whizzing around again today, pushing up the daily average closer to what we were hoping for. Still need a few more breezy days to catch up with the plan although we are continuing to produce more
than we are consuming which was one of the main aims of the project.
We have been researching the latest Phillips LED Growlights to trial in the lab and have now ordered a couple to try out. They look bizarre as they only have red and blue bulbs so the overall effect is quite dark, but apparently the plants like it and they are said to be 60% more efficient as well as a lot cooler in operation which saves on climate control costs too. We will see how they do over the winter and when the cash-flow recovers in 2012 we will look at making another significant sustainability investment. One financial hiccup is that this investment isn’t as obviously beneficial as it could have been as we are now generating cheap electricity so the savings aren’t as great in £’s only in carbon.
The recent wooden tray returns have gone pretty well, we still are a few short, but looking back over the three seasons we have been using them we have achieved a return rate of 97.5% which is brilliant. Well done everyone, especially those who
have achieved a 100% return of which there are many.
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
We had another very full week again, I keep thinking we will get a quiet week but there seems to be so much going on Monday saw my last official PLATO Sustain meeting and a résumé of all the things we had all done over two years which was a surprising amount. The timing seems to have been perfect for those of us who stuck the course (9 out of 13) with sustainability coming much more to the fore in businesses of all sizes. OK I know some may only be playing lip service to it at the moment but those of us who are embracing it are seeing some valuable returns already with plenty more to come. We are going to continue our local group on a self financed quarterly basis, meeting up at each other’s premises to try to keep up the momentum and I’m looking forward to the first one at a rubber mouldings manufacturer!
The changing weather prompted some pre-winter repairs this week which seem to have gone really well. The lab growth room and mess room roof’s had sprung a few leaks where the covers had split. The mess room we re-sheeted which looks good and the growth room we repaired with some very expensive but hopefully effective tape (Eternabond). We have tried repairing this roof before with bituminous stuff, but it has dried and split again, the tape looks much more suited to the job was quite easy to apply. What did we do before the internet!
Had a trip to the solicitors to sort out the official lease paperwork for the turbine sites which are on the field above the nursery. 28 pages of legal stuff and a bill larger than the rent for 20 years! Everything odd ‘little’ job done for this project costs another couple of thousand, whether it’s bat survey, archaeologists, solicitors, planning stuff, servicing contracts, electric extras. If only we could charge these labour rates for our skills in horticulture, still at least we are not bitter, we do have such a lovely lifestyle after all!
It is that frustrating time of year when our computer security software comes up for renewal. Every year what should be a simple renewal of licensing turns into a long winded, hair pulling cock-up. That’s the advantage of having me as the IT department! I got a reminder from Symantec that it was coming up to renewal time and they gave me a renewal code number to use. Looks easy and if you have a domestic version or have a business in the USA or Canada it is, but in the UK you have to buy it through a reseller. Went to the company who sold it to us last year, sorry we don’t do renewals, searched the internet for the UK and no obvious candidates, it was easier and cheaper to buy from new again. Bought it and tried to load it, slow start as no instructions as to what to do until one of the 6 disc’s supplied goes in (no indication of which one first). Then have to stop loading to remove the old version first. Remove that then try again, window appears to say that this version won’t load onto Windows 7, hurrah guess what we have. Spend the rest of the morning finding and reloading the old version as
we have now have no protection on our main computer. Then I find out that I can load the new one onto W7 if I use another loading method. I’ve decided to take a break from this and will try again tonight, could be a long one.
Eco News
The turbines have been productive this week and are whizzing around again today, pushing up the daily average closer to what we were hoping for. Still need a few more breezy days to catch up with the plan although we are continuing to produce more
than we are consuming which was one of the main aims of the project.
We have been researching the latest Phillips LED Growlights to trial in the lab and have now ordered a couple to try out. They look bizarre as they only have red and blue bulbs so the overall effect is quite dark, but apparently the plants like it and they are said to be 60% more efficient as well as a lot cooler in operation which saves on climate control costs too. We will see how they do over the winter and when the cash-flow recovers in 2012 we will look at making another significant sustainability investment. One financial hiccup is that this investment isn’t as obviously beneficial as it could have been as we are now generating cheap electricity so the savings aren’t as great in £’s only in carbon.
The recent wooden tray returns have gone pretty well, we still are a few short, but looking back over the three seasons we have been using them we have achieved a return rate of 97.5% which is brilliant. Well done everyone, especially those who
have achieved a 100% return of which there are many.
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
Monday, 3 October 2011
Summer at last. A bit late but a nice vitamin D boost before the long haul through until next summer, which is due I believe in March. Not the best of weekends to make my hockey debut for this season with two games in two days. I’m still standing after yesterdays jog about on the wing but I suspect I will be suffering after today’s fixture. Luckily it’s the over 50’s cup so not too many younger than me this time.
A lot of rubbish in the news this week. There was one day when I think the boys and girls in charge thought we needed a bit of uplifting after months of doom and gloom with economic woes and cut backs so they threw us a couple of token bonuses. All I felt were shockingly negative and wide of the mark but pandering to a perceived public demand. Just as we are getting into the swing of living more sustainably and doing lots more recycling we get told that weekly mixed rubbish collections are going to be encouraged, relying on investment in clever sorting equipment to get the recycling done. First of all the equipment is not there at the moment to achieve this with completely mixed waste and how good is that equipment anyway, surely there will be huge cross contamination between all the different wastes that can go into the domestic bins. Then there is the negative message which comes across that we can go back to not thinking about where stuff comes from and where it goes. Sorting the recycling can have a very positive influence on attitudes over a long period, as annoying chores become inbuilt ‘feel good’ habits, at which point we can move on to the next stage whatever that might be.
Another rumour of change was the discussion on raising the speed limit which seems to go against most boring but sensible thinking. Although car development and safety has come a long way they are still heavy fast moving objects controlled by rather unpredictable organic life-forms on increasingly crowded roads. On those roads there are even bigger objects that are restricted to 56mph so the contrast in speeds will be even greater which looks to be asking for trouble. On top of that the loss in fuel efficiency is already big between 60 and 70, let alone at the higher speeds, so carbon output will increase instantly.
Then the BBC were warning one morning about the dangers of handling and eating veg that had been grown in the soil, potatoes and leeks getting particularly bad press, all due to a tenuous link to a very widespread, but not huge, e-coli food poisoning outbreak for which they could find no other explanation. They couldn’t pin anything down to a single farm, district or even county but ran out of other possible links. Now I don’t know much about medicine but if the soil around the whole country was widely infected and soil on veg was the real source of this outbreak why haven’t we seen it in all those other years when soil appeared on fresh veg? I hope no-one took this too seriously as veg growing is tough enough without silly rumours hitting the markets.
Now for the rubbish good news. Recycling for small businesses is getting more efficient and the result is falling costs to us. This week we reviewed our waste disposal choices and managed to simplify our sorting/storage choices by picking more comprehensive disposal packages now being offered to businesses in our area. Because we produce relatively small volumes of waste we have had to work quite hard to get our various different recyclable wastes taken away. This has involved several different contracts, lots of individual costs and plenty of inconvenience, but it would appear that there is now enough organisation in the waste industry for more inclusive flexible solutions to be offered at lower cost. This means that most of our recyclable waste can go to one contractor in one bin, in one collection, once a fortnight at far less than we were paying before. Not only that but we are now recycling so much of our waste that we are reducing our non-recyclable waste collections to once a fortnight rather than weekly which means another saving. We also found out that our mixed waste goes to energy generation (incinerator) rather than landfill which is not perfect but better.
Eco News
The dominant high pressure system has slowed up the turbines somewhat this week but we are hopeful that the autumn storms will return soon (every cloud has a silver lining). We heard from the SSE Feed in Tariff people this week letting us know that we would need to obtain an export meter number, a half hourly export meter and an export contract to be eligible for FIT’s. I informed them calmly that all this was already in place (all installed and contracted to SSE!) and we had been generating and metered since July 21st. Am I the only one that has any idea what is going on? They said they would check it out and get back to me. They must have sorted it out as the contract turned up the next day and we are now signed up and have sent in our first quarterly reading (end Sept), hurrah. Despite the generation slow down over the last week and a bit we still managed to generate more than we used, not just September but over the whole period since the switch on. So some of that carbon surplus can go towards balancing the next big carbon user our delivery system.
Have a good week.
A lot of rubbish in the news this week. There was one day when I think the boys and girls in charge thought we needed a bit of uplifting after months of doom and gloom with economic woes and cut backs so they threw us a couple of token bonuses. All I felt were shockingly negative and wide of the mark but pandering to a perceived public demand. Just as we are getting into the swing of living more sustainably and doing lots more recycling we get told that weekly mixed rubbish collections are going to be encouraged, relying on investment in clever sorting equipment to get the recycling done. First of all the equipment is not there at the moment to achieve this with completely mixed waste and how good is that equipment anyway, surely there will be huge cross contamination between all the different wastes that can go into the domestic bins. Then there is the negative message which comes across that we can go back to not thinking about where stuff comes from and where it goes. Sorting the recycling can have a very positive influence on attitudes over a long period, as annoying chores become inbuilt ‘feel good’ habits, at which point we can move on to the next stage whatever that might be.
Another rumour of change was the discussion on raising the speed limit which seems to go against most boring but sensible thinking. Although car development and safety has come a long way they are still heavy fast moving objects controlled by rather unpredictable organic life-forms on increasingly crowded roads. On those roads there are even bigger objects that are restricted to 56mph so the contrast in speeds will be even greater which looks to be asking for trouble. On top of that the loss in fuel efficiency is already big between 60 and 70, let alone at the higher speeds, so carbon output will increase instantly.
Then the BBC were warning one morning about the dangers of handling and eating veg that had been grown in the soil, potatoes and leeks getting particularly bad press, all due to a tenuous link to a very widespread, but not huge, e-coli food poisoning outbreak for which they could find no other explanation. They couldn’t pin anything down to a single farm, district or even county but ran out of other possible links. Now I don’t know much about medicine but if the soil around the whole country was widely infected and soil on veg was the real source of this outbreak why haven’t we seen it in all those other years when soil appeared on fresh veg? I hope no-one took this too seriously as veg growing is tough enough without silly rumours hitting the markets.
Now for the rubbish good news. Recycling for small businesses is getting more efficient and the result is falling costs to us. This week we reviewed our waste disposal choices and managed to simplify our sorting/storage choices by picking more comprehensive disposal packages now being offered to businesses in our area. Because we produce relatively small volumes of waste we have had to work quite hard to get our various different recyclable wastes taken away. This has involved several different contracts, lots of individual costs and plenty of inconvenience, but it would appear that there is now enough organisation in the waste industry for more inclusive flexible solutions to be offered at lower cost. This means that most of our recyclable waste can go to one contractor in one bin, in one collection, once a fortnight at far less than we were paying before. Not only that but we are now recycling so much of our waste that we are reducing our non-recyclable waste collections to once a fortnight rather than weekly which means another saving. We also found out that our mixed waste goes to energy generation (incinerator) rather than landfill which is not perfect but better.
Eco News
The dominant high pressure system has slowed up the turbines somewhat this week but we are hopeful that the autumn storms will return soon (every cloud has a silver lining). We heard from the SSE Feed in Tariff people this week letting us know that we would need to obtain an export meter number, a half hourly export meter and an export contract to be eligible for FIT’s. I informed them calmly that all this was already in place (all installed and contracted to SSE!) and we had been generating and metered since July 21st. Am I the only one that has any idea what is going on? They said they would check it out and get back to me. They must have sorted it out as the contract turned up the next day and we are now signed up and have sent in our first quarterly reading (end Sept), hurrah. Despite the generation slow down over the last week and a bit we still managed to generate more than we used, not just September but over the whole period since the switch on. So some of that carbon surplus can go towards balancing the next big carbon user our delivery system.
Have a good week.
Monday, 26 September 2011
A slow start this morning after a big day yesterday. It was our first go at entering the Lowaters Nursery (Garden Beauty) 5-a-side football tournament followed by a night out at a local charity ball. Considering I was still up after 10.30 and the fluid intake was above average my head feels fine unfortunately the rest of my body has let me down.
The only way I could make it into the team was to play in goal as we had plenty of volunteers to play on the pitch but I underestimated the effort involved in repeatedly lying horizontal between a couple of posts. Actually the lying horizontal bit was ok it was the getting down and back up again that did me in. My thighs are very stiff and sore, I’ve got carpet burns and bruises on knees, elbows and hips and one wrist doesn’t work anymore. I was like the six-million-dollar-man in the first game, if anyone remembers that far back, everything I did was in slow motion but unfortunately the shots weren’t. A pint of Guinness and a sausage and bacon roll put that right and things did improve in the later games, in fact much to our surprise we won with a 100% record through the whole day. We had one or two very useful players but the thing that swung it was the team work, if we used everyone together it worked fantastically well most of the time and the occasional cock-ups were soon forgotten. It was a perfect sunny autumn day for it and Lowaters did a great job organising it and raising valuable funds for the Greenfingers charity, so well done them. I had hoped a bit of jigging about in the evening would help stretch things out but I fear the only thing really stretched was the waistband. Hopefully things generally will have loosened up a bit by tomorrow and I can start moving around again without quite as many old person’s moans and groans.
2012 is creeping up very quickly and I saw this week that they have already announced the Great Britain sailing team. I don’t know much about sailing but I hear that Ben Ainsley has made it into his fourth Olympics which is a great achievement especially when you think of all the time he spends cooking and hosting Ready Steady Cook.
Back on the nursery, the herbaceous bulbs have just arrived so that means another last few days potting and we will be done for 2012. All the seasonal helpers have gone back to college or other jobs now and we are back to our core backbone of hardworking regulars. That must mean those days are returning when we treasure every penny that comes in and dread each that slips out as the cash-flow issues build through winter until the spring income starts again in a few months time. At least we can see how much better the nursery, stock and business look at this point in comparison to other recent years, real progress and excitement for the coming seasons.
Hopefully the wind keeps the turbines turning over the next few months which should give us a handy boost to the autumn and winter income, it is not quite like printing money but it does provide a regular bonus. On top of that we will have a whole winters benefit of the extra house insulation we put in last winter which will save several more hundreds of pounds. Slowly, slowly catchee monkey.
Eco News
I went to a PLATO Sustain conference last week which was very good but rather disappointingly attended, lots of up to date sustainability info and I learnt a bit about effective business governance. Sounds very dull but was actually quite inspiring. One thing an effective company board can do is take a step back from the everyday fire-fighting that tends to dominate general management in challenging times and take a look at longer term strategy. This can cut back on the fire-fighting which is an obvious immediate bonus and also identify opportunities or approaching challenges in the coming years, sustainability being one of those. Then the very next day we had a sustainability issue reappear in conversation with our plant health inspector. This is something we have started addressing quietly ourselves over the last couple of years and may become a much bigger issue in the coming years for the whole horticultural industry. The advantages of local purchasing of stock is likely to become more obvious as transport costs (in £’s as well as carbon) continue to escalate. But there may be a more urgent issue that could create a real strategic challenge for plant growers and retailers and that is the increasing spread of non-native pests and diseases. One pest we have had come onto the quarantined part of our nursery on imported cuttings is the tobacco whitefly. It is known to carry 152 seriously harmful plant viruses that can devastate commercial food crops and is already seriously affecting production abroad of all sorts of crops. At present it is a notifiable disease in the UK and is being stopped from spreading by effective monitoring and control by importing nurseries (us) and the plant inspectorate. Although this has worked so far there is the possibility that regular offenders (propagation nurseries abroad) could be banned from sending stock to the UK. This could produce sudden serious loss of supply and shortages and in the future could result in a lot more restrictions of plant movements between countries and even within countries. In the longer term there are even fears of plant movement restrictions within the UK, resulting effectively in forced local growing and purchasing. Something to think about for all you buyers and growers out there.
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
The only way I could make it into the team was to play in goal as we had plenty of volunteers to play on the pitch but I underestimated the effort involved in repeatedly lying horizontal between a couple of posts. Actually the lying horizontal bit was ok it was the getting down and back up again that did me in. My thighs are very stiff and sore, I’ve got carpet burns and bruises on knees, elbows and hips and one wrist doesn’t work anymore. I was like the six-million-dollar-man in the first game, if anyone remembers that far back, everything I did was in slow motion but unfortunately the shots weren’t. A pint of Guinness and a sausage and bacon roll put that right and things did improve in the later games, in fact much to our surprise we won with a 100% record through the whole day. We had one or two very useful players but the thing that swung it was the team work, if we used everyone together it worked fantastically well most of the time and the occasional cock-ups were soon forgotten. It was a perfect sunny autumn day for it and Lowaters did a great job organising it and raising valuable funds for the Greenfingers charity, so well done them. I had hoped a bit of jigging about in the evening would help stretch things out but I fear the only thing really stretched was the waistband. Hopefully things generally will have loosened up a bit by tomorrow and I can start moving around again without quite as many old person’s moans and groans.
2012 is creeping up very quickly and I saw this week that they have already announced the Great Britain sailing team. I don’t know much about sailing but I hear that Ben Ainsley has made it into his fourth Olympics which is a great achievement especially when you think of all the time he spends cooking and hosting Ready Steady Cook.
Back on the nursery, the herbaceous bulbs have just arrived so that means another last few days potting and we will be done for 2012. All the seasonal helpers have gone back to college or other jobs now and we are back to our core backbone of hardworking regulars. That must mean those days are returning when we treasure every penny that comes in and dread each that slips out as the cash-flow issues build through winter until the spring income starts again in a few months time. At least we can see how much better the nursery, stock and business look at this point in comparison to other recent years, real progress and excitement for the coming seasons.
Hopefully the wind keeps the turbines turning over the next few months which should give us a handy boost to the autumn and winter income, it is not quite like printing money but it does provide a regular bonus. On top of that we will have a whole winters benefit of the extra house insulation we put in last winter which will save several more hundreds of pounds. Slowly, slowly catchee monkey.
Eco News
I went to a PLATO Sustain conference last week which was very good but rather disappointingly attended, lots of up to date sustainability info and I learnt a bit about effective business governance. Sounds very dull but was actually quite inspiring. One thing an effective company board can do is take a step back from the everyday fire-fighting that tends to dominate general management in challenging times and take a look at longer term strategy. This can cut back on the fire-fighting which is an obvious immediate bonus and also identify opportunities or approaching challenges in the coming years, sustainability being one of those. Then the very next day we had a sustainability issue reappear in conversation with our plant health inspector. This is something we have started addressing quietly ourselves over the last couple of years and may become a much bigger issue in the coming years for the whole horticultural industry. The advantages of local purchasing of stock is likely to become more obvious as transport costs (in £’s as well as carbon) continue to escalate. But there may be a more urgent issue that could create a real strategic challenge for plant growers and retailers and that is the increasing spread of non-native pests and diseases. One pest we have had come onto the quarantined part of our nursery on imported cuttings is the tobacco whitefly. It is known to carry 152 seriously harmful plant viruses that can devastate commercial food crops and is already seriously affecting production abroad of all sorts of crops. At present it is a notifiable disease in the UK and is being stopped from spreading by effective monitoring and control by importing nurseries (us) and the plant inspectorate. Although this has worked so far there is the possibility that regular offenders (propagation nurseries abroad) could be banned from sending stock to the UK. This could produce sudden serious loss of supply and shortages and in the future could result in a lot more restrictions of plant movements between countries and even within countries. In the longer term there are even fears of plant movement restrictions within the UK, resulting effectively in forced local growing and purchasing. Something to think about for all you buyers and growers out there.
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
Monday, 19 September 2011
Very autumnal at the moment, sun, wind, rain, then no wind and that’s just in the last couple of hours. Naturally the morning that we had a few visitors on the nursery this week was the time when there was no turbine movement at all.
A disappointing labelling issue came up last week when a large supermarket got away with labelling a range of sausages as Hereford sausages despite the fact that they were made with meat from Argentina! Some of the meat was from the breed of cattle called Hereford which were produced in Argentina, hence the allowed description. There are similar issues with things like English butter which can be made of milk from anywhere as long as it is actually turned into butter in England. Tesco’s got caught out too with their latest sausage advert where it appeared that the meat content was from free range pigs when in fact only some of the meat was free range and the rest was from crated pigs, oops. Having dealt with several multiples ourselves I know that however much you want to trust them you just can’t, they will pay lip service to what they think you want to hear and then do whatever they like to make more money. To be fair I have heard much more positive things said about Waitrose but then they are a worker owned business so perhaps the culture is more positive.
Very sad news about the miners in Wales, but the scary thing for me was the reaction of a guest commentator on the BBC who said how shocked he was that anyone was still working in conditions like that. It might not be as common in the UK as it was but all around the world there are miners working in appalling conditions and dying to extract minerals cheaply to make what we consume. The fact that we choose to ignore that and assume everyone works under the same conditions as us is a comforting thought but a long way from reality.
Now the nights are drawing in there is more time to do some star gazing. I can only recognize a very few constellations and at my age I forget any new ones I get shown with a few minutes so it has been great to find the Google Sky app for Caroline’s smart-phone. Once loaded you just hold it up to the sky and it will show you what you are looking at. Brilliant.
Although we are dead keen on keeping things as natural and sustainable as we can that doesn’t mean we don’t use technology to help where we can. We are after all a plant manufacturing unit and have to produce as efficiently as we can to keep our prices as competitive as possible. One of the latest toys we have to help is a rugged handheld mini-computer which will put up with outside nursery use and help us be more efficient in updating our stock info and availability lists. In the past we have had to input updated info manually into the computer system which was always slow and sometimes inaccurate. Over the past 6 months we have been working with a company (Qsys) developing the software to use on the new device and we are now in the last phase of fine tuning this first phase. It works nicely already and has lots of scope for later development (photos, videos, barcode scanning, GPS positioning for batch location are all possibilities). If only nursery work was as well paid as software programming!
Oh yes, there are some yummy plants to buy on the nursery if you want some.
Eco News
Overall it had been a good sustainability week, we generated 2,500 units and we collected a large number of our wooden trays to dry out, clean, repair and get into storage ready for next season. Hopefully we will recover enough trays to get through another season without having to invest in any more trays which is the sort of result we had hoped for when we set off down this particular packaging route. If you have any tray stock ready to be returned then please let us know and we will pop in next time we are in your area. If you are unsure of the balance of trays owed please contact me and I can print off a report and we can sort out things before any shortage bills go out.
Nature notes
There are some great seasonal treats about at the moment, we’ve had some great blackberries and now the apples are coming on stream too. We’ve been through the early Discoveries and now the Worcester’s are in the shops, crisp & delicious, miles better than the foreign stuff in taste and sustainability. For those who struggle with getting through their quota of daily fruit get your storage right. In the past we used to buy fruit and watch it rot in the bowl or just go wrinkly. Pears were always a nightmare, hard for a while, ripe for 30 seconds and rotten minutes later. Then we started keeping apples and pears in the fridge and they are fantastic, keeping crisp & juicy for ages. Look out for some tasty late soft fruit in the shops but keep an eye on where they come from (blueberries this weekend are coming from Argentina!). For a free treat go for a walk in the woods and hoover up the hazelnuts which are now falling. If you’ve got squirrels around you will need to be quick. I’ve picked a good lot up and started working through them even though they are a bit green, the flavour develops as they mature and they keep for months
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
A disappointing labelling issue came up last week when a large supermarket got away with labelling a range of sausages as Hereford sausages despite the fact that they were made with meat from Argentina! Some of the meat was from the breed of cattle called Hereford which were produced in Argentina, hence the allowed description. There are similar issues with things like English butter which can be made of milk from anywhere as long as it is actually turned into butter in England. Tesco’s got caught out too with their latest sausage advert where it appeared that the meat content was from free range pigs when in fact only some of the meat was free range and the rest was from crated pigs, oops. Having dealt with several multiples ourselves I know that however much you want to trust them you just can’t, they will pay lip service to what they think you want to hear and then do whatever they like to make more money. To be fair I have heard much more positive things said about Waitrose but then they are a worker owned business so perhaps the culture is more positive.
Very sad news about the miners in Wales, but the scary thing for me was the reaction of a guest commentator on the BBC who said how shocked he was that anyone was still working in conditions like that. It might not be as common in the UK as it was but all around the world there are miners working in appalling conditions and dying to extract minerals cheaply to make what we consume. The fact that we choose to ignore that and assume everyone works under the same conditions as us is a comforting thought but a long way from reality.
Now the nights are drawing in there is more time to do some star gazing. I can only recognize a very few constellations and at my age I forget any new ones I get shown with a few minutes so it has been great to find the Google Sky app for Caroline’s smart-phone. Once loaded you just hold it up to the sky and it will show you what you are looking at. Brilliant.
Although we are dead keen on keeping things as natural and sustainable as we can that doesn’t mean we don’t use technology to help where we can. We are after all a plant manufacturing unit and have to produce as efficiently as we can to keep our prices as competitive as possible. One of the latest toys we have to help is a rugged handheld mini-computer which will put up with outside nursery use and help us be more efficient in updating our stock info and availability lists. In the past we have had to input updated info manually into the computer system which was always slow and sometimes inaccurate. Over the past 6 months we have been working with a company (Qsys) developing the software to use on the new device and we are now in the last phase of fine tuning this first phase. It works nicely already and has lots of scope for later development (photos, videos, barcode scanning, GPS positioning for batch location are all possibilities). If only nursery work was as well paid as software programming!
Oh yes, there are some yummy plants to buy on the nursery if you want some.
Eco News
Overall it had been a good sustainability week, we generated 2,500 units and we collected a large number of our wooden trays to dry out, clean, repair and get into storage ready for next season. Hopefully we will recover enough trays to get through another season without having to invest in any more trays which is the sort of result we had hoped for when we set off down this particular packaging route. If you have any tray stock ready to be returned then please let us know and we will pop in next time we are in your area. If you are unsure of the balance of trays owed please contact me and I can print off a report and we can sort out things before any shortage bills go out.
Nature notes
There are some great seasonal treats about at the moment, we’ve had some great blackberries and now the apples are coming on stream too. We’ve been through the early Discoveries and now the Worcester’s are in the shops, crisp & delicious, miles better than the foreign stuff in taste and sustainability. For those who struggle with getting through their quota of daily fruit get your storage right. In the past we used to buy fruit and watch it rot in the bowl or just go wrinkly. Pears were always a nightmare, hard for a while, ripe for 30 seconds and rotten minutes later. Then we started keeping apples and pears in the fridge and they are fantastic, keeping crisp & juicy for ages. Look out for some tasty late soft fruit in the shops but keep an eye on where they come from (blueberries this weekend are coming from Argentina!). For a free treat go for a walk in the woods and hoover up the hazelnuts which are now falling. If you’ve got squirrels around you will need to be quick. I’ve picked a good lot up and started working through them even though they are a bit green, the flavour develops as they mature and they keep for months
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
Monday, 12 September 2011
Sun is shining and the wind is breezing by, perfect for us. It’s funny how a change in circumstances alters your perception on everyday stuff. I always found windy weather a bit tense making, especially at this time of year when the impending dark winter days loom together with all the associated issues that present themselves at this time of year. The reducing sales and cash-flow panics, short days, colder temps, leaking roofs and still lots to get sorted before Spring sales kick off again in January. The autumn wind blasting by was often the last straw in focusing the tension but now I’m watching out for them with glee, checking on the meter to see how much we might generate. This week has seen a big jump in production with just under 3000 units over 7 days which is nearly half of the months anticipated amount. This is now helping catch up with the shortfall of the first month and the next few days look promising too. At times it was too windy and the turbines production started to fall slightly where the efficiency falls away slightly in the stronger winds. This is a feature of our inshore turbines where they reach peak efficiency at relatively low wind speeds to make the most of the lower speeds experienced inland and that efficiency tails off very slightly at the higher speeds experienced in stormy weather.
It was a very busy week with plenty of orders whizzing out and several box collections made which was great. I also managed to squeeze in a PLATO Sustain meeting, a trip to Mums, a day at Four Oaks trade show and a morning in Wem (Shropshire) picking up our new hand held rugged computer (like a big smart phone) and learning how to make it fit on our system. I haven’t been to Four Oaks for years and saw lots of interesting stuff. Unfortunately Caroline has confiscated the cheque book so I didn’t come away with anything other than a handful of brochures and a few ideas lined up for next year’s improvements. Philips lighting were showing their range of LED lighting for use in growth rooms which looks promising for the microprop lab, I expect we will get a trial going in there soon to test them out. They can reduce the direct energy cost by 60% and lower the requirements for cooling on top of that (it’s cheaper to heat than cool with air source heat pump systems like ours). If the plants like them it will pay back within 3-4 years. I must admit they look odd as the lighting arrays are made up of a mix of just blue and red lights and look quite dark. They only add white lights (if needed) to help us see what we are doing!
It was noticeable on several stands that sustainability was shooting up the agenda although it is still shocking to see some of the lack of thought and amount of waste created at this sort of event. One example was the lunch boxes delivered to the exhibitors of which there were hundreds. Organised by Four Oaks and sponsored by Horticulture Week, they were corex (corrugated plastic) suitcases holding the sandwich, apple, crisps and possibly a drink. They looked wasteful, dated, out of touch, and dominated the rubbish bins. Luckily I am now so old I can make a fuss without embarrassment, well not to me anyway, so I stirred it up with most of the exhibitors I spoke to and went to the Hort Week stand to see if they had registered what a poorly thought out promotion this was. The two youngsters on the stand had differing views, one asked if they were really that bad and the other hung his head in shame admitting that they had paid for these and perhaps they could have done a better job. There is still a long way to go in this world to get things going in the right direction and it gets a bit scary when horticulture, a fundamentally green industry, still has such a blinkered view. Luckily I do get to hear from some of you about how much you are doing at work and in your own homes to move things forward so well done you lot, keep it up.
Nature notes
House martins still in the nests but feeding well. Although our swallows have gone I still saw lots in Shropshire so it might not be too late.
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
It was a very busy week with plenty of orders whizzing out and several box collections made which was great. I also managed to squeeze in a PLATO Sustain meeting, a trip to Mums, a day at Four Oaks trade show and a morning in Wem (Shropshire) picking up our new hand held rugged computer (like a big smart phone) and learning how to make it fit on our system. I haven’t been to Four Oaks for years and saw lots of interesting stuff. Unfortunately Caroline has confiscated the cheque book so I didn’t come away with anything other than a handful of brochures and a few ideas lined up for next year’s improvements. Philips lighting were showing their range of LED lighting for use in growth rooms which looks promising for the microprop lab, I expect we will get a trial going in there soon to test them out. They can reduce the direct energy cost by 60% and lower the requirements for cooling on top of that (it’s cheaper to heat than cool with air source heat pump systems like ours). If the plants like them it will pay back within 3-4 years. I must admit they look odd as the lighting arrays are made up of a mix of just blue and red lights and look quite dark. They only add white lights (if needed) to help us see what we are doing!
It was noticeable on several stands that sustainability was shooting up the agenda although it is still shocking to see some of the lack of thought and amount of waste created at this sort of event. One example was the lunch boxes delivered to the exhibitors of which there were hundreds. Organised by Four Oaks and sponsored by Horticulture Week, they were corex (corrugated plastic) suitcases holding the sandwich, apple, crisps and possibly a drink. They looked wasteful, dated, out of touch, and dominated the rubbish bins. Luckily I am now so old I can make a fuss without embarrassment, well not to me anyway, so I stirred it up with most of the exhibitors I spoke to and went to the Hort Week stand to see if they had registered what a poorly thought out promotion this was. The two youngsters on the stand had differing views, one asked if they were really that bad and the other hung his head in shame admitting that they had paid for these and perhaps they could have done a better job. There is still a long way to go in this world to get things going in the right direction and it gets a bit scary when horticulture, a fundamentally green industry, still has such a blinkered view. Luckily I do get to hear from some of you about how much you are doing at work and in your own homes to move things forward so well done you lot, keep it up.
Nature notes
House martins still in the nests but feeding well. Although our swallows have gone I still saw lots in Shropshire so it might not be too late.
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
Monday, 5 September 2011
September already, how did that happen? I’m not desperately keen on sunshine and heat but it doesn’t feel like summer has happened yet. An unsettled and windy (hurrah) week to come is going to feel autumnal but we could still have a couple of summery weeks yet with a bit of luck. Anyway I’m not too worried now as we had our summer break last Sunday with a lovely day trip to the sunny Isle of Wight. Beer and sandwiches on the beach and slight sun scorch after rashly removing my socks from under my sandals. The beach cleared after a short shower just in time for a quick game of beach cricket where I took the ‘catch of the day’ before retiring hurt with a groin strain after doing the splits trying a bit too hard stretching for a wide ball. I missed our first hockey game yesterday because of that, claiming to have picked up the injury training in preparation for the new season. It’s a good job I only went for the day or I would be in a wheel chair by now.
We are just coming towards to the end of the potting for next spring’s crops, the last compost load comes in on Monday and we just have a few more tunnels to clear to make room for it all. We can then get stuck in to some nursery maintenance to get prepared for the winter. With a bit of luck it won’t be as dramatic as the last two, we are not very good with snow down here and we did loose quite a lot of the less hardy stock in the very cold snaps. With a bit more preparation we will hopefully avoid that level of loss and come into a nice sunny spring with even better stock than ever before. We have got to recover the despatch area, the mess room and the lab very soon as all are leaking badly and internal running water in the winter is no fun when it’s not in the pipes.
One thing that will be interesting to see is the performance of the house heating over an entire autumn and winter. Last year’s insulation efforts (roof, cavity walls and under-floor) and wood burner fitting were only completed in mid December and the reduction in oil consumption was dramatic even for part of the cold season. The oil savings made have already paid back the insulation costs and part of the burner fitting so a whole season’s savings should go even further. If you have not looked at insulating recently, take a look, the benefits to the environment and the annual financial rewards are impressive and in our case the comfort improvement on cold nights is luxurious.
Although we didn’t have a particularly breezy August the figures for the first month of turbine generating look ok. Not earth shattering but a reasonable start. We won’t really know how things look on the production front until we have been going a couple of years as the wind does vary so much. Overall we generated about 2/3rds of the average monthly output needed to reach our estimated annual generation, but our consumption reduced a bit too with a replacement air source heat pump with a more efficient model. If we not had the set up problem with the one turbine which put it out of action for several of the windiest days we would have come very close to a carbon neutral electric supply which had been one of our main targets for the project. The month ended on a whimper with our first nil generation day, but hopefully this week we might see what could be done in a breezier spell.
Nature notes
Swallows have all gone and a lot of the house martins too although there are at least three if not four nests of house martins still with a late second batch of youngsters in residence. Hopefully they haven’t left it too late and they get airborne soon before the cool and wet gets a grip.
Have a good week, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries
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