Better Together

In the spring, grower Carlo van Schagen from Egmond suddenly walked into our house with a fantastic bunch of beautiful double peony-flowered tulips. They all come from the late flowering French tulip Renown. You know the double Renown Unique, he told us, but these other two spontaneously emerged in my batch of Renown Unique. They are Glamour Unique and Princess Unique, beautiful, aren't they? Would you like to start selling them in the Fluwel webshop, I have bulbs available. Behold the power of nature and enjoy these beautiful peony-flowered tulips later in the spring, he convinced us passionately. That enthusiasm was really no longer necessary, I had already seen that these were really three tulips for the Fluwel assortment.

Tulip mix French Blend Rose

If you are familiar with our Tulip Mixture French Blend Rose, the beautiful graceful Tulips in this mixture are cut from exactly the same wood as the three Tulips in the Better Together mixture. One of the Tulips in the French Blend Rose is the Tulip Renown and from this Renown the three beautiful double-flowered varieties of the Better Together mixture spontaneously emerged.

Better Together

We have been buying quite a lot of bulbs from the nursery of Carlo van Schagen nursery for a long time because he always delivers excellent quality. Of course we don't say no to such a nice offer. But the good quality is by far not the only reason that we buy bulbs from Carlo. Van Schagen is one of the pioneers when it comes to organic cultivation of flower bulbs, he has almost completely banned the use of chemical agents from his nursery. Carlo is also one of the participants of NLG Holland.

Wait, I'm talking question marks here, this needs an explanation. NLG stands for Natural Living & Growth. It is a group of flower bulb growers who all showed a lot of interest in organic cultivation of flower bulbs. What do you do if you are curious about organic cultivation, you go to Huiberts Organic Flower Bulbs in Sint Maartensbrug run by Johanna and John Huiberts. Huiberts has been growing flower bulbs for years without using a single gram of chemicals for crop protection and fertilization. Huiberts soon noticed that a number of curious bulb growers gathered around him who were somewhat surprised that, over the years, he had started to harvest flower bulbs very well in a 100% organic way.

Soon the idea was put forward among the curious growers to apply Huiberts' knowledge and expertise on a large scale in practice, but with an insurance premium that in emergencies they could fall back on chemistry. Huiberts managed to teach them that a good result with organic cultivation starts with good soil. Over the years, the flower bulb soils have become poor in trace elements and micro-organisms that are necessary to produce strong flower bulbs that are resistant to disease and illness due to intensive cultivation. They started to increase the organic matter content in the soil and to disinfect the flower bulbs and to spray the crop with biological enhancers instead of with disease-fighting chemicals.

Of course there were major setbacks in the first years but without too many consequences, the chemistry could always be used and there was the collective knowledge of the entire group. Many answers to problems were found by regularly looking at each other as a group and seeing how colleagues were doing and thus sharing ideas and solutions with each other. Surprisingly good results were also achieved, when after a year or so the soil gradually became strong it was amazing to see how little chemistry was still needed. A number of members of the NLG group have managed over the years to use only 10% of the chemistry that is advised in conventional cultivation by traders in chemical pesticides.

A very nice and positive development, initiated by ten broad-minded growers who are convinced that things can be done differently and better. We like to buy bulbs from these NLG companies, and we buy a lot of them, they have the same vision as us. Where NLG strives for sustainability in the cultivation of flower bulbs, Fluwel does the same when it comes to energy . In a previous newsletter I already told you how we do our best to be completely self-sufficient in terms of energy and we can now say that the entire company runs for the full 100% on green, self-generated electricity. I sincerely hope that many flower bulb growers will follow the good example of Carlo van Schagen and the other passionate pioneers of the NLG group because there is much to be gained.

Sjips, in my enthusiasm I almost forgot to talk about the beautiful Tulips. After Carlo had left our office and we had the three bunches of beautiful double Tulips in vases, Renata suddenly said; wouldn't it be nicer if we put them together in a vase, I think they look better together... Better Together. Bull's eye, together they create a fantastic harmony, they bring out the best in each other. Actually exactly the same as in the NLG Holland group; by doing it together it becomes much more beautiful.

Kind regards,

Carlos van der Veek