Croconut

Crocus vernus Aqua

This week I'm going to point out some brand new Crocuses , but first I want to bother you with a few announcements and tips.


Dahlia Fleurel , 1 flower is enough for a beautiful vase.

Last week I stumbled into the garden of one of our enthusiastic bulb users in the neighbourhood, and to my horror I saw that the lord of the house had put his daughter to work: planting dahlias . The tubers a good foot apart, the cut-off piece of stem pointing upwards at ground level, the cloves neatly pointing downwards, in short, it all sounded good. But mid-March ??? What a fool, that can't be right (don't tell anyone, but this was my brother). A good night frost in April and they'll kick the bucket. Please read the planting instructions first if you have little or no experience with a particular bulb crop: see Dahlia (fluwel.nl)

Flowers from your own garden… Dahlias

As for the planting time of the Dahlia , we used to learn at school that this was definitely not allowed before after the Ice Saints on May 14th. After this date, the chance of night frost had almost completely disappeared. With the climate becoming milder, you can now plant the Dahlias in the protected environment of the garden as early as the end of April or beginning of May. To be sure, check the 14-day weather forecast to see if there are any strange things expected with night frosts, but if that is not the case, you can plant your Dahlias with a clear conscience.


Dahlia Sefton Silvertop changes colour during flowering from light pink to a beautiful pink and then becomes an even more beautiful pink.

What you can do now with the Dahlias is 'force' them. This is also possible with Begonias . Force is getting your Dahlias or Begonias to grow earlier. If you do this, they will often flower a good month earlier in the garden and you can enjoy them longer. These two tubers will not stop flowering in the fall because they started earlier. They will continue to flower until the fall weather becomes too cold and bleak to produce new flowers.

To favor

By the way, this forcing is a lot easier than it sounds. For Dahlias, you simply take a plastic plant pot with holes in the bottom, pour a handful of moist potting soil into it, place the Dahlia with its toes downwards in the pot and sprinkle it with moist potting soil, so that its nose still sticks out a few centimetres above the potting soil. Place the pot in a light place in a shed, a conservatory, a cold greenhouse or in the hallway near the back door and it will quietly start to grow roots. After a week or two you will see that the tubers are making green sprouts. As soon as the risk of night frost has disappeared around the beginning of May, carefully remove the tubers from the pot and plant them in the garden. Because the growth has already started, they will really come into full bloom considerably earlier and you can enjoy them longer.

Begonia Lace Picotee Pink

The Begonia likes a slightly higher temperature during the forcing process for a good start. If you do not have a greenhouse or conservatory, it is best to place it indoors on the windowsill. This is no problem, because the Begonia will be satisfied with a much smaller pot than the Dahlia . Also plant it in the garden a little later, wait until the weather really gets milder, it will grow better if the temperature is a bit friendlier. If you want to use the Begonia as a pot or patio plant, try to force it into the right pot straight away. And do not let the Begonia stick out above the ground as you do with the Dahlia , plant it just a centimetre below the soil surface and keep the potting soil slightly moist.


Zantedeschia , a summer bloomer that you can also enjoy as a cut flower for a very long time.

Zantedeschias , Lilies and other summer flowering bulbs are best planted immediately when you receive them. This week, flower bulb growers will also start planting these bulbs en masse in the bulb fields. This type of flower bulbs simply needs a longer start-up period before they emerge above ground. They are not at risk from possible night frosts, because they are often not yet above ground.

In addition, the Lily is of course a flower bulb that always prefers to be in the ground, where it feels most at home, just like a perennial. Neatly packed in potting soil and stored cool, such as in our cold store, you can also safely plant the Lily in April. But it is always best to plant the Lily as soon as you receive it.

Nerine Lipstick , another flower bulb from which you can pick excellent flowers.

Is there more to tell about the summer bloomers or can I start about the Crocuses now? Sure, but first the Crocuses . Or no, not after all, there is not enough space left to make a nice story about it. Next week Crocuses . I will tell something else to fill the 1000 words. This week Uncle Kees was buried. Actually he was not an uncle at all. Or was he? Funny huh, I actually don't even know. He was the friend of Aunt Door. Aunt Door, widow of Uncle Niek, brother of my father, and a very sweet Aunt, you know, one of those warm interested women of whom you sometimes think 'if only everyone were like that'. Just a fantastic Aunt, but by marriage, yes that's how we say it, from the cold side. What do you think, because Aunt Door was such a nice woman, even when she became a widow, she was seduced by the then 86 year old casanova Uncle Kees, 11 years ago. Great, and he was a nice man, just like Aunt Door. For eleven years they shared their joys and sorrows and they went everywhere. Uncle Kees had a little car and he loved nothing more than driving it and going somewhere with Aunt Door. That's why he regularly came from Lisse to visit my mother, a nice drive to De Noord. And because of those visits we knew Uncle Kees quite well. He really drove everywhere, and if he hadn't died he would probably have taken another drive with Aunt Door today, at the age of 97. And not at a speed of 65/70 on an 80 kilometer road, no Uncle Kees drove neatly. Sometimes you see that, you meet them, you sit behind them; such an old man behind the wheel who doesn't dare to drive 80 anymore. I think that's fantastic, I always think that's what I want to do. I'm going to do that later when I'm old, drive 65 on the N9.

Dahlia Islander , a lovely loose-flowered Dahlia that you can pick endlessly.

That reminds me of Mr. Deeg de Jager. I think I was about 16 years old, we already had a large Daffodil collection of hundreds of varieties at home and one of the loyal visitors in the spring was Mr. Deeg de Jager. An icon in the Daffodil world. At the time, it was hard to find someone with more knowledge of Daffodils than Deeg de Jager. De Jager lived in Schoorl, about 8 kilometers away from us, was 102 years old and came to us every weekend from his nursing home in his orange-brown Opel Kadetje to look at Daffodils . It was a pleasure to walk between the Daffodils with such a knowledgeable cannon. But when he got tired after an hour, he came to me and said; Carlos, can you put the car on the road, I can't reverse down the dam. Of course, no problem. When I got to the car, I saw the bumper a meter or two in the rosehips. Yes, I braked a bit too late, said De Jager. The car was neatly placed on the road with the nose of the car towards Schoorl and there he went again in his tufje. Acceleration in 1st gear and I kept watching to see if it was going well. Beautiful, at the end of the road, about 800 meters further, De Jager was still driving in his first gear, with your mobility scooter you could overtake him. I bet he never put the car in second gear until Schoorl. But I digress and I still have to answer my own question; the answer is Yes, Uncle Kees was Uncle Kees.

Kind regards,

Carlos van der Veek

PS: Tip of the week, you already saw it a bit in the photos: cut flowers. Pick flowers from the flower bulbs that you plant and give them away. Just like that, when you go to visit, just take a few flowers with you. There is nothing as nice as giving away flowers from your own garden and I should know, I do nothing else. Live Life.

Lilium Viva la Vida … Live Life.