Newsletter,
June 2025
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Ton Vreeken ❞I stumbled upon this wise text, a short poem, in the spirit of Jacob (“Vadertje”) Cats. Taken literally, it's very apt, but figuratively I have my reservations... more on that later!
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Never been awayMy colleagues Mila and Ruben have written all the Newsletters and Newsflashes for the past 2 months. This was necessary as I had other things on my mind, which I will tell you more about in the personal chat. So, you're not rid of me yet! In between, I still got to do many wonderful things: performing in 3 beautiful plays, supplying hundreds of thousands of rare seeds for a greening project in Asia, starting as a Green Coach for Dordrecht, helping various growers with advice or meeting them to strengthen connections, and giving various lectures throughout the country. Furthermore, I'm still a point of contact for my former team: How should this be done? How did you approach that? Would you like to do that quote? In short, plenty of pleasant and challenging distractions...
Growth and Decline
While our collection and stock of Plants has now grown to maximum choice and quantity (come and have a look!), the stock of potatoes and other edible tubers and bulbs can now shrink, the flower bulbs can still go into the ground but can now be sold out, and the asparagus plants can also go, in short: I can announce the annual big sale!
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Potatoes "End of Season Package"More and more hobby gardeners are discovering that you can also plant potatoes very well as a subsequent crop. Well then: the first harvests from your garden are in, the broad beans and peas are nearing their end, you have already harvested leafy vegetables several times. Cultivation this year was not complicated, apart from watering during the dry months of April and May. So it's time for a subsequent crop! If you plant potatoes now, you will harvest them in September, you can even store them for a while and sow them in your greenhouse in August for young potatoes by Christmas! Just google "late-season potatoes"; the English discovered this fun crop years ago!
We are aiming for a "everything must go" effect, so that the cold room can be emptied and turned off!
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Bulb package "Full of Bulbs"Occasional extra warmth, occasional gentle rain... we call that "growth weather." If you plant bulbs in the coming weeks, they will "shoot" out of the ground, I promise you! Our enormous assortment is, of course, never completely sold out, which is why we are starting a great sale with these colorful and cheerful bulbs and tubers—feel free to be tempted!
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Asparagus plants, known as "crowns"The asparagus must be in the ground by the end of this month; we have kept them properly cool (and thus dormant). You get optimally healthy plants at a great price, because these plant roots are also on sale, respond quickly, because my experience is that they sell out fast...
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Edible Bulbs and TubersThere's still plenty available within our assortment of edible bulbs and tubers:
- Seed potatoes, fun to plant late in the year so you can harvest delicious, young potatoes in autumn. (See also the aforementioned Potato Package)
- Garlic, onion sets, and shallots, need no explanation, they are harvestable at any stage.
- Elephant garlic, perennial with a mild garlic flavor and beautiful blooms.
- Oca, Ulluco, Indian potato, etc. We still have a small assortment of these unique tubers, which will let you discover new flavors.
We'll put together a nice package of (some of) the above varieties worth €50.00 and offer it for half price: €25.00
News from the Garden Team
As I mentioned, our Sales Garden is bursting with the most unique and beautiful plants! I'll highlight a few:
Plenty of beautiful Perennial Kale
Beautiful, fragrant and aromatic Mountain Basil
and a new variety of Rhubarb 'Poncho'
RARE AND SPECIAL! After several years of searching, we have been able to purchase a very special plant again. They have not been delivered yet, but you can order them now.
For a substantial corner in the garden, this is a shrub that will surprise you: its leaves, up to 1 m in diameter, look very exotic, and yet the plant is winter hardy. If your interest is piqued, act now, because it might be years before this one comes along again...
Pepper lovers, do you still have room for hot varieties? We have 3 spicy varieties available that are looking for an owner. Bring it on!
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Seed ExperiencesLarge and small shipments of seeds arrive weekly, some still for this year, some already for the 2025-2026 season. Some varieties were long out of stock and are now back on the shelves. It's always good news when the shelves in our shop are refilled; I hate empty spots.
A species that definitely deserves all your attention is the "Yarrow lawn".
We very often get the question whether there are other plants besides grass that you can walk on daily. From my own experience and observation, I concluded that yarrow is a very good candidate. I found confirmation of this online, and we were able to make a great purchase of this fragrant, tough herb. Coming soon! Important cultivation tip: for compact growth, walk on it regularly, choose a sunny spot and not too rich soil, mowing is allowed.
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IntroductionsPerhaps you'd like to take a look at the NEW varieties that arrived in June. Some can already be ordered, while others you can add to your favorites because they'll be on the shelves soon:
The Private Chat
As I mentioned at the beginning, my colleagues completely took over writing the newsletter for two months. I was working, but I had less energy for hours of concentration. This is what happened: my daughter-in-law underwent planned open-heart surgery on April 30. Everything had been prepared as thoroughly as possible, but the operation turned out to be more complicated than anticipated, and her recovery was continuously met with setbacks, some of which were very tense. In total, she spent about forty days in intensive care, and now, finally and to our great relief and emotion, she is making progress. Our son and granddaughter are staying with us for now; we are intensely involved with each other.
Going back to the emblem (picture with a poem) with which I started: figuratively, this nice poem means that every cause has a goal towards a beautiful outcome. Well, I have long since abandoned that idea and I lean more towards the ideas of thinkers such as Albert Camus, Sartre, and Nietzsche, just look them up... In an earlier Newsletter about beautiful, cheerful, or sad events that can occur in your life, I mentioned that Rumi's poem The Guest House continuously inspires me, although recently the balance has often tipped towards difficulties.
These days we often say to each other: how strange, but also beautiful, it is that after every setback in my daughter-in-law's illness, we allow ourselves to be cheered up again by the small glimmers of hope. Camus wrote: "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer." Encouraging words!
We look forward to further recovery; there is still a long road of rehabilitation ahead.
Ton Vreeken, mid-June 2025