Morning all,

I must admit to being rather partial to a stiff breeze these days but tonight’s approaching storm is making me a bit nervous.

Hopefully by the time you read this it with have all blown over and things aren’t quite as bad as the news would have us believe. At least we have had ample warning this time which is great. We’ve been around and battened down just about all we can so we can’t do much more. Had an exciting week here with most of the spring flowering bulbs arriving at last and getting potted. Apparently their season was very late and supplies have been short and delayed. We have potted a lovely big batch of Snakes Head Fritillaries again this time in an effort to get another stunning spring display. Unfortunately the last two years have seen the whole lot go to the mice as they dug them up and carried them off, the little tykes. This time we have potted them onto Danish trolleys and will keep them there until they actually come into growth hoping that this will fool them. Generally our autumn mouse control programme we started a few weeks ago should keep us ahead of the game anyway, with well over 40 already snapped.

We tested out the health and welfare services this week when one of our elderly neighbours unfortunately had a bit of a fall and I’m very glad to say that everyone was brilliant. Nothing like the horror stories you read about. From the emergency call line staff, the care company girls who pop in each day to help out, the ambulance and casualty staff from the hospital, the district nurse, the social workers to the rehab hospital where she is now recovering. Luckily everyone already knew her case so the lines of communication were more or less in place but everything just went so smoothly you felt she was in good

caring hands. I know these things don’t always go quite this well but it was very reassuring to me that there is a system there with loads of very caring folk working hard to make it work and it can do great things. Hoorah. A bit of a well done to Caroline too, who was by her side all the evening and night to oil the wheels and help out with background info and stuff. It was a very long night in the end but ended as well as it possibly could.

I’m really pleased with this week’s ‘pallet’ shed/woodstore construction. I managed to find enough nearly matching pallets to make what I think is quite a smart building but was soon knocked back to earth when Catherine commented that it wasn’t really an ‘upcycling’ use of the pallets. I had been thinking of moving in as it was so nice, perhaps it’s a bit of a blokes thing getting that excited about a shed. Anyway it’s not quite finished yet and I’m just hoping it’s still there tomorrow.I will just have another walk round to check all is ok, then it’s back indoors for a cosy evening in and a tense night.

Box returns

Lots of boxes have been successfully repatriated so thanks for the great response to the appeal I sent out for their return. I know there are still quite a few out there so please do let us know if you have any ready to collect and we will schedule them in for collection when we are next close by. Alternatively if there aren’t too many we may elect to pick them up on the next delivery in the up and coming spring rush!

Please feel free to continue to keep what you need to keep our stock on display, but a gathering of our boxes used for other displays would be appreciated. If you do love the display boxes and you desperately want to keep up that image for other parts of your plant area then why not consider getting in your own stock of trays. Our supplier is C. Jackson www.cjackson.co.uk/plant_trays.htm and they can make you your own plain or branded/printed trays at a very reasonable cost. It is really very important we get these boxes returned or accounted for, so we can maintain a good looking and sustainable delivery and display system. Please do drop us an email to update us on the current position if you haven’t already done so.

Cheers.

Have a good one from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.

Morning all,

Autumn wind and showers here in abundance this weekend although it is very warm. Turbines whizzing round making up a bit for the quiet weather in September, which turned out to be the quietest month this year on the wind front. Although I always used to think the autumn was the windy time of year it isn’t actually that good. On average June, July and August are the quiet ones but a month or two either side can be slow. I suppose the Autumn storms stay in the memory but between those we tend to get the other classic autumn fare of the quiet spells of damp and fog. The winter months are usually the peak output which is handy as it is also the time of peak demand.

I wonder how much time around the country is lost to Candy Crush? Haven’t actually received or made a call on the new phone yet but loads of useful apps installed. I am assuming there is an app for everything as all everyone seems to do now is stare and fiddle with their little screens. I’ve already had a quick search to see how easy it might be to get my own app up and running. Not sure what it will be yet but there must still be some areas of life not covered. Any suggestions?

Still bowling along on the nursery getting a few chores and repair jobs cleared up before winter steps in. Recovered the roof on the top half of the despatch tunnel as it was 13 years old and struggling to stay in one piece. We had the plastic in stock having done the bottom half last year. The warm temperature and low wind on one day looked good so we whipped it on quite quickly. It will need a small tweek in one corner on the next still day but looks good for another 10+ years.

Had a bit of a hairy time adjusting the height of our portacabin coldstore on Friday. It is pretty ancient and has suffered a bit of old age sagging, you know how that goes, no of course you don’t. Anyway we had to get a trolley jack under one corner at a time, lift it a bit and slide a slab under the main support floor support struts. Unfortunately these buildings aren’t very keen on this process and there was a lot of twisting, creaking and groaning and not just from me. All went well until the last corner when we had a bit too much movement and the whole side wall bowed out quite dramatically. We quickly lowered it again and the wall returned to near its original position. After checking the doors etc still all matched up and opened ok we decided to leave well alone. We fitted a brace to push in and hold in the mobile wall in its correct position but it did bring home the need for more investment if we are to keep the infrastructure of the business together which in the current climate is a bit scary. Best turn a blind eye and hope for the best!

Looks like it’s brightening up here so I need to get out there and get on with my new construction. I am converting our old outside plastic tray store into a wood store. Since we put in the brilliant wood burning stove I have struggled to find a big and dry enough place to put all the fuel needed and have been using this open fronted lean-to construction as a rather damp low volume store. I spent yesterday morning sorting out old pallets suitable to make my new walls and floor and working out the design. Obviously there will be a certain special charm to a pallet built structure so I was trying to sort out some matching

strong ones to at least give it some sense of togetherness. Naturally this went really well, I needed 12 identical lighter weight ones for the front, but could only find 11 and 8 heavy solid ones for the floor but only found 7. Out of all the piles of old pallets I couldn’t believe the conspiracy put up against my lovely plans, just how many different designs and sizes of pallets are there?

Box returns

Lots of boxes have been successfully repatriated so thanks for the great response to the appeal I sent out for their return. I know there are still quite a few out there so please do let us know if you have any ready to collect and we will schedule them in for collection when we are next close by. Alternatively if there aren’t too many we may elect to pick them up on the next delivery in the up and coming spring rush!

Please feel free to continue to keep what you need to keep our stock on display, but a gathering of our boxes used for other displays would be appreciated. If you do love the display boxes and you desperately want to keep up that image for other parts of your plant area then why not consider getting in your own stock of trays. Our supplier is C. Jackson www.cjackson.co.uk/plant_trays.htm and they can make you your own plain or branded/printed trays at a very reasonable cost.

It is really very important we get these boxes returned or accounted for, so we can maintain a good looking and sustainable delivery and display system. Please do drop us an email to update us on the current position if you haven’t already done so.

Cheers.

Have a good one, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries

Morning all,
Bit of a shock when the warm weather ended this week. I know it was forecast but it still seemed to take a day or two to find enough clothes to layer on. Autumn and winter all seem very cosy in the imagination but I always seem to forget the inconvenience of all that extra kit. We even lit the wood burner again for a couple of evenings to take the chill off. At least I have got a bit of wood stacked away ready to keep us warm most of the time with out having to resort to the central heating. 
Just ordered the first delivery of heating oil for next week so that focuses the efforts to keep the wood burner going, ouch. 
The news was full of energy price increases again, SSE announcing an 8%+ increase and despite their great efforts to blame the green taxes the government are imposing to support insulation projects etc and the renewable energy costs when you look a bit more closely the biggest increases are increasing carbon based fuel costs and the big in creases in distribution costs which take up a surprising proportion of the bill. What seems to have passed unnoticed so far is that the companies running the distribution networks are somewhat related to the big energy companies. Down here we were dealing with SSE Distribution which is run as a separate company to the energy company but is basically under the same group of companies They work in 
a non competitive environment charging more or less what they like for works on the cable network as we experienced when putting in the turbines a few years ago. Then there is the separate SSE Metering company that runs the installation, supply and maintenance of the metering of most supplies down here. As a company we are paying them £360 a year for the privilege of having a meter on site, and then we pay a charge of about £160 to have the m eter read and the data made available to the company who pay us for our exported electricity then another £180 or so to have the meter data supplied to another company who charge us for all the electricity we use. So that is £700+ a year to have the meter read. I’m not bitter! 
Made great use of the last of the summer weather this week by getting the last two tunnel covers completed. We only just managed it with the last one going on Wednesday just as the wind started to pick up. We nearly lost Elaine who was trying to hang on to the edge of the sheet as the wind gusted but she was given permission to let go and all was saved in the end. 
Stepped forward into the modern world with an updated smart-phone this week and then spent most of Friday and all weekend working out why the wireless modem in the house wouldn't work with the new phone when it was fine with the Caroline’s and the laptop. Turned out to be the security settings in the modem which were very tricky to get access to. In the end I had to install a spare modem and programme that to fit in with the big network it is part of. Wouldn't have take more than half an hour if I knew what I was doing, but my expertise usually just runs to turning it off and on again, which actually I did have to do several times. Anyway all sorted now after a few choice words so all happy. I have already found the new phone quite handy. This morning Caroline's phone buzzed away and vibrated when a mes sage arrived while lying in bed then 
just after that a similar noise and vibration came from my side and I was successfully able to suggest I had just received a message too. 
Box returns 
Thanks for the great response to the email appeal I sent out for the return of as many boxes as you can lay your hands on. Don’t worry if you are still using a few them for display of our stock we just need to track down the spares of which there still appear to be a scary number out there! It is really very important we get these boxes returned or accounted for, so we can maintain a good looking and sustainable delivery and display system. Please do drop us an email to update us on the current position if you haven’t already done so. 

Cheers. 
Have a good one, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries 

Morning all,

Busy week just passed with a full end of year stocktake. Always a big job but virtually all done and dusted, with just the last bits to add up. No final idea yet how it will all look on the books as it will take a couple of weeks to finalise all the accounts with still a few invoices for September to arrive etc. No matter how bad the year has been I always have a glimmer of hope at this stage that perhaps it wasn’t as bad as feared which is usually followed by the inevitable sinking realisation that it was. However this year maybe it will be different! Seeing and counting up the plants out on the nursery certainly highlighted some fab crops on the ground, our big crop of micropropagated soft fruit modules is by far and away our best ever, and there are some fantastically strong chunky plants all ready to sell in the coming spring. Every year we keep making little steps forward and with a bit of decent weather at the right time next season perhaps we might make up a bit on the losses of the last couple of years. Fingers crossed.

It is interesting to see some of the big boys in the garden centre world pushing their weight around again. I spoke to one nursery this week that was losing the will to carry on as negotiations and competitive quotations dragged on for the sale of stock destined for sale next spring and seasons beyond. Much of the stock is already grown for next year and there is the chance that the contract for those will go elsewhere, scary stuff. Although the competition is mostly between UK nurseries it is still a potentially very negative process with potentially dire implications for the losers. I did ask why the growers didn’t do some joint deals/quotes so that they could each sell their own stock rather than topping up stock shortages with imported stuff from abroad, but the initial reaction was one of it would be ‘sleeping with the enemy’. There then followed a slight realisation that perhaps the enemy wasn’t the other producer anymore but the buyer! This can’t be a very healthy way forward can it, where the suppliers hate and mistrust their customers? It doesn’t sound too clever to me. Even the mighty supermarkets are beginning to recognise that working together with their suppliers in a way that allows then all to make a penny or two is a much safer and progressive way to work. Prices driven down to unsustainable levels keep wages and profits low in an industry complaining of a lack of up and coming talent through the ranks.

Luckily we haven’t had to deal with this sort of bullying anymore having stepped away from it a few years back and I can happily say that we like our customers. It’s still tough to make it work but we don’t want our customers to beat us up we just want to be loved and that is our motivation to do better every year!

I might end up getting dragged a bit closer to modern life this week with a realisation that I might have got a bit behind the times on the personal communications front. I get so tied up with all the stuff here I can easily ignore what the rest of the world is getting hooked up to and the years just slip by. Apparently a nine year old mobile is getting a bit past its best an d now people’s lives are revolving around the phone in their pocket. I have hung out for a long time in the belief that a mobile phone was what you used to make a call in an emergency which is why I rarely have mine with me and when I do it is turned off (to save up the battery for the emergency). I have to admit that maybe they do a bit more now and might have a few

useful aids for modern living. I know Caroline spends a lot of time on hers, despite it also being a bit old, it certainly saves her talking to me over an evening. 

Availability

Fresh Asters coming on song with loads of bud and colour showing. Lady in Blue, Little Carlow, Starlight, Rosenwitchel and Snowsprite are all stunning.

We also have a fresh batch of Anemones coming into their own. Strong plants with flower stems appearing.

Winter and early spring favourites are coming beautifully with strong late growth on the Helleborus, Pulmonaria, and Bergenia varieties. There are even a few stray flowers on the Primula vulgaris having a quick practice for their spring performance.

Box returns

Thanks for the great response to the email appeal I sent out for the return of as many boxes as you can lay your hands on.

Don’t worry if you are still using them for display of our stuff we just need to track down the spares of which there appear to be a scary number out there! It is really very important we get these boxes returned or accounted for, so we can maintain a good looking and sustainable delivery and display system. Please do drop us an email to update us on the current position if you haven’t already done so.

Cheers.

Have a good one, from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries