No. 84: B2N.

I hear about failed, but also very large harvests; this year holds many surprises! Sometimes insects or other animals beat you to it and illegally (albeit unknowingly) feast on your harvest. We search year-round for handy and clever ways to protect your crops from these pests. Don't be 100% protective; many of these animals and critters are a link in a fragile food chain. The "Pest Book" offers an interesting perspective on this.

Our entire range of protective productscan be found here, but I'd like to highlight a frequently used and handy little helper: Netlon bags. We use them for packaging onion sets, shallots, and seed potatoes... they turn out to be ideal for protecting grape bunches from birds or wasps, and for protecting sweet corn from animals, and... you name it! The bags can be used for several years; our customers have discovered the applications themselves!

If the protection has been successful, then it's time to harvest! You understand that we, and many clever manufacturers, have thought about this. May I highlight some handy products? The fruit picker is a very old design and useful for apples and pears that hang too high.

Berry pickers are hardly needed anymore this year, even late berries were a month earlier this year, but these handy harvesting combs should not be left in the shade anyway...

For cutting reeds, corn, grass, and verges, you use 2 old-fashioned tools: the scythe and the sickle. We sell a beautifully forged Hand Scythe or very sharp Reed and Grass Sickles.

Finally, our most technically ingenious Harvest Marvel, which has saved many professional growers a tremendous amount of labor! Connect it to your cordless drill and you'll harvest buckets full of leafy greens in a very short time!

Hopefully, the rain will do its blessed work this weekend too. It's not enough yet, but every shower saves hours of watering! All that drought and heat have taken a toll on soil health. Of course, there will be a recovery period, but you can help. Worms, insects, and microorganisms need oxygen, moisture, and food.

Oxygen

Now that it's raining occasionally, the soil can get some air again. There's a lot of tools available for this; with a digging fork, you can bring some air by lifting clods a bit. This is much faster and more effective with a broadfork, which also makes winter digging unnecessary. You can easily crumble the top crust of the soil (and remove young weeds) with the rotary hoe; I used to spend many hours with this handy tool.

Moisture

Besides adding water, retaining water is an important requirement for your soil. I say it often: mulching, mulching, mulching... see my previous Newsletter. This week, we've also added Bio-Crêpe to our assortment. Coming soon to the website!

Food

To give your soil an initial "boost," you can sprinkle worm castings, for example. An important basis for soil life are beneficial fungi and... microorganisms.

View and order Worm Castings

We have the latter in a concentrated form as Microferm. It's also a miracle cure for the compost heap, but spraying the soil with it will accelerate the recovery of all soil life!

View and order Microferm

Yes, yes... the pallets with flower bulbs are currently rolling in and we already have over 80% of the assortment in stock. The autumn bloomers have been here for a while and now you can already order our beloved spring bloomers. You can choose from 500 different types and colours; we are among the largest suppliers of bulbs. Did you know that our growers are committed to cultivating as environmentally friendly as possible? Did you know that these top growers export all over the world and select the best quality for us? Did you know that you can plant up to 100 bulbs per square meter? Don't plant them in a straight line, but concentrated together!

Throughout September, it's back again: Alliums to plant in autumn!

• We have garlic from 2 different sources: professional French quality and rarer varieties grown in the Netherlands. The French ones are first-hand, large bulbs, and optimally virus-free. The Dutch grower provides slightly smaller bulbs of hobby quality, grown with love, by the way. They are not in stock yet, but you can order them now. You can find detailed cultivation instructions for garlic (also applicable to onions!) here.
• For tasty "fresh" spring onions, plant the 'Sturon' variety during these months, and harvest them half-grown in October-November. Under glass, you can continue a bit longer... this is a popular crop for growers who want to do a second planting.
• More winter-hardy and therefore harvestable from late spring are the 'Troy' and 'Shakespeare' onions. You can order them here.
• The tastiest shallots are planted in autumn. This year, we can again supply both varieties: 'Griselle' and 'Grisor'. The French swear by these two varieties, and a true connoisseur will confirm it: this is how shallots should really taste!
• There are even more special flavors to experience. I will come back to them in future newsletters, but take a look at these varieties that you can also plant from September: St John's Onions, Wild Garlic, Russian Garlic, Serpent Garlic, Mouse Garlic, Prehistoric Leek, Pink Garlic, Italian Wild Onions, and the Italian Wild Onion.

More and more people visit our shop a few times a year or proudly show the shop to friends or family... I often hear statements like "look, this is the shop I was talking about, you don't see this anywhere else!" (with a touch of pride).

For years, we have also been discovered by the media and spoiled with a lot of free PR. This summer, we were prominently featured in the supplement of many national newspapers; you can see that article here (PDF from media page). Regional TV (Rijnmond) came by for a nice report, which led to me being on radio and TV.

Our plant nursery is currently in top condition, fortunately, we no longer need to water twice a day. Now is the perfect time to plant strawberries; our assortment of modern and historical varieties is at its peak! You can find the entire assortment here: you can order 3 convenient offers here: For autumn, I will be building up a unique assortment of fruit varieties; we will be adding about 20 unknown species and varieties! We will be scaling down our herbaceous plants over the next month, so act fast before there's no choice left.

Sowing in September: on the homepage, you'll find a list of species you can still sow for each month. In the shop, I've set up a special display for them. Here's the list of ideas for September (PDF Aug-Sept).

I can imagine you might be surprised to find a trolley with antiques and curiosities in our shop: we're clearing out our old display materials and other fun items. At this time, we occasionally get around to decluttering, making space!

I realized that the word “waiting” is currently a major theme in our lives. Our daughter (almost 9 months pregnant) is waiting, together with the whole family, of course, for the big moment of birth! Our second grandchild (another girl!) is eagerly awaited...

From last week onwards, as Grandma and Grandpa, we became the caretakers (and cuddlers) of our granddaughter Lilou. Her parental leave is over, so we get to babysit for 1.5 days; my wife takes on the lion's share, but suddenly, taking breaks has taken on a different meaning for me too!

In the meantime, I am also busy with changing the guard, in the sense of: the search for a good successor for our company. Discussions, negotiations, expectations, and ideas... an exciting period, luckily we're not in a hurry: I hope to stick around for a few more years, but you don't just transfer 42 years of experience, so I want to take my time. New candidates can still apply: passion, versatility, industriousness, and a hefty savings account are the first requirements! To be continued!

Ton Vreeken, August 24, 2018