The first pancake always fails

Amaryllis Flamingo Amadeus

I have to smile already. Must be pancake I can already hear Jacqueline, who always checks my newsletter, say. Yes, I type too fast, according to the girls at the office and daughter Pien I make too many mistakes so I have to have them check it. And they are going to bake pancakes. I have never heard anyone say pancake, always pannekoek, so I write pannekoek. And of course when you talk about a failure, then it is completely pannekoek. I like that, that makes me smile. Amaryllis Splash

But the biggest inside joke (there you have another one) comes from remembering the visit of Vlad and me to Amaryllis grower Ben van Geest. Due to the great popularity of the Amaryllis, we went there to strengthen the stock a bit. We arrived around cupping time, good timing, and there were quite a few people in the small, always cozy canteen at Ben and his brother Gerard's. One of the people present was a big, talkative, quite neat man. I couldn't quite place him, on the one hand he really seemed like a gardener to me, but on the other hand there was also something that was just a little too neat about him. He also had the last word and was a pleasant man to listen to. 'Carlos' I introduced myself politely with a firm handshake, especially from his side. Van Geest (sorry forgot my first name) he said, brother of Gerard and Ben, the oldest and the wisest. Those are my little brothers he continued with a grin at his brothers. Yes, I thought you were the oldest, I replied. Why did you think that? Well, that's logical, the first pancake always fails. Ben and Gerard burst out laughing. Always fun at Van Geest's canteen. Zantedeschia, a popular flower bulb, especially among people who garden in pots and pans

This week I also went to see Dick Hoornsman, our Zantedeschia supplier. We have known each other for a long time, we used to chat together at the bar in the Zandloper. Dick has a wonderful company and supplies us with tulips in addition to Zantedeschias. He had just started preparing the first Zantedeschias for export to America, so I took a look in the shed. I thought it would be nice to show the newsletter readers, the processing of Zantedeschias in a modern flower bulb company. Even I was surprised at how beautifully and modernly these tubers were processed, I will show you. This is how the tubers sit in the box, harvested about 4 weeks ago and first slowly dried in the shed Here you have to look carefully, this is the processing line. In the upper left corner you can see the box in which I just showed the tubers in the sand. Via a conveyor belt they come into the white party tent where the sand is brushed off with soft brushes. Very dusty, that is why a tent has been placed over the cleaner where all the dust is sucked out. Then people are sitting there removing the last stem remains from the tubers and the tubers are put on the weighing counter. It is a weighing-counting machine, each container in which a tuber is placed is weighed and the machine tips the container over when it reaches the exit with the right size, or in this case the right weight. Then they are checked again for size, diseased and sore or damage.

After they have been checked, they are counted again and, that is fun, on a counting machine that I have never seen working before. Above the photo you can see a film on the screen of the tubers moving under the machine. Every time the AI ​​in the machine thinks it sees a circle, it counts it. She has already counted 189, size 16. At 251 she has to stop, the bin is changed and she starts on the next bin.

And so they arrive neatly in the containers ready for shipment to the buyers

Nice tubers, aren't they?

Now that we're talking about high-tech, I have another nice photo to show you, it surprised me a bit too. This is in England, Cornwall in the tractor with Richard who is planting Daffodils. That is starting to look a lot like the cockpit of a Boeing Triple Seven. And then the boss on the phone… By the way, there are three of these tractors driving around on the Varfell farm where Richard works. Altogether, around 1500 hectares of daffodils are grown on this farm. It is a three-year crop, so every year around 500 hectares are dug up and replanted. This was the last day of planting for the men, the job was done for this year. It is still incredibly beautiful all this modernization.

Do these pictures make you want to plant Daffodils too 😊 There are still a few in our webshop. Time to stop again, see you next week,

Kind regards,

Carlos van der Veek