The First Pancake Is Always A Bit Wonky

Amaryllis Flamingo Amadeus 

I have to smile to myself when I think back to visiting Amaryllis grower Ben van Geest with Vlad. The Amaryllis was very popular, so we went over to Ben’s place to strengthen our supplies a little bit. We arrived during their coffee break, which is good timing, because there were lots of people in the cozy break room Ben and his brother Gerard have at their greenhouse. One of the attendants was a large, talkative, kind of sophisticated-looking man who I could not quite read. He kind of looked like a grower, but he also didn’t: He looked a bit too nice for that. He was leading the conversation and he was nice to listen to. I introduced myself as Carlos and he introduced himself by his last name, “Van Geest–the oldest and wisest.” With a grin on his face, he pointed to Ben and Gerard: “Those are my little brothers!” I told him I already thought he must be the oldest and wisest, and when he asked my why, I said: “Well, obviously, the first pancake is always a bit wonky.” Ben and Gerard where hysterical, this is just another day in their break room.

 Amaryllis Splash

Zantedeschia, these are mostly popular with people who like to plant their bulbs in flower pots

I also visited Dick Hoornsman this week, our Zantedeschia grower. We have known each other for a long time, back when we used to visit the same pub on the weekend. Dick has a beautiful warehouse and besides Zantedeschias, he also supplies Tulips. He was just starting to get his Zantedeschias ready for shipment to the USA, so I took a look in his warehouse to be able to show you what that looks like.  The tubers come in crates like this. They were dug about four weeks ago. After that, they were put to dry, a slow process that takes place inside the warehouse.

This is where you have to take a good look.This is how they move through the warehouse. In the upper left corner, you see the crates that I just showed you, the ones full of sand. By way of a moving conveyor belt, they arrive in that white tent, where soft brushes take off most of the sand. Very dusty, which is why the white tent hangs over that piece of the conveyor belt. The dust gets sucked out of the tent at the same time. After that, people take the last pieces of old stem off the tubers and the tubers move on to be weighed and counted. In this machine, every bulb goes into their own little box, where it is weighed. It is then send on to the proper exit, divided by how large the individual bulbs are. Their size determines what they will be used for next season.  After this, they get one more inspection, this time to see if there are any ill or extremely bad looking ones that weren’t taken out during the previous stop

After this inspection, they are counted again, and this counting machine is fun: I’ve never seen one like this in action before. In the photo you see a high screen with a video of the bulbs moving through the machine in real time. Every time the machine detects a circle, it is counted as a bulb. It has counted 189 of them now. At 251, it stops, and the crate has to be switched so the next one can be filled. 

This is what the crates look like before they are sent out to the buyers Good looking tubers

Now that we are talking about high tech, I have another picture to show you:  This is in England, in Cornwall. Richard is on a tractor planting Daffodils. It is starting to look more and more like an airplane cockpit… There are three of these tractors at Varfell, where Richard works. In total, there are over 1500 hectares of Daffodils grown here. They have a three-year cycle, so every year, 500 hectares get dug up and planted. This was taken during the last few days of planting, so they were almost at the end of a busy period. I do enjoy seeing all these modern technologies helping us out with the flowers.

I hope seeing this will get you excited about planting your own Daffodils too. There are still a lot of them to choose from in our webshop if you haven’t made a decision yet. See you next week, 

Kind regards,

Carlos van der Veek