Pencil plant as a mnemonic

Euphorbia tirucalli (Pencil plant)

You have to neglect her a bit, she likes that. I'm doing pretty well, she's standing next to my computer and I can tell you with a clear conscience; it's the ugliest plant I have in my house. A tangle of branches, completely in the tis and if I don't support her a bit she tumbles in all directions. I'm quietly sitting on the computer and a branch of that piece of junk suddenly flops in front of my screen. So it's no problem to neglect her, I'll happily skip watering her, if she's lucky she'll get a sip of cold ginger tea splashed into her pot every now and then. As you can hear, I'm crazy about the Pencil Plant but in the meantime building a mnemonic has completely failed.


Keukenhof

Then cold on your roof: take them out. Really, that is the best for the long term future of your garden. The Tulip simply does not have the strength and resilience that a Daffodil, a Crocus or, as far as I am concerned, a Pencil Plant (☺ it will still come in handy) has. If you plant a Crocus , a Daffodil or one of those other many special spring flowering bulbs, nine times out of ten they will return for years in a row. The Tulip is an exotic, behaves like a princess, sometimes finds it too cold and too wet here and before you know it, it has been taken by a fungus or is suffering from other feeding frenzy.

Now that in itself is not so bad that one is occasionally destroyed by Mother Nature, but she does spoil it for the next generations. She leaves the germs of all her ailments behind with a grudge; if I cannot grow here, then neither can the next generation. The Tulip is really less reliable when it comes to coming back year after year. Especially if you plan to plant Tulips more intensively for several years, play it safe and take your Tulips out of the ground after flowering.

Polder garden Anna Paulowna end of April

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking to the great conductor of the Keukenhof gardens. 'And, next week all the tulips out' I asked him. We won't make it in a week, but as soon as possible. What else do you do to keep the soil free of disease and clean for all those tulips you plant? That's not so bad said the arranger, if you remove the bulbs thoroughly and neatly after flowering you can really plant tulips for years in a row with good results. It doesn't happen very often that we have to pull the emergency brake but it does happen that we decide to dig up a piece of flowerbed and provide it with clean soil, things do go wrong sometimes in the 75 years that we have been planting tulips there, but it has been years since we last did that. No, keep the soil healthy, ensure sufficient organic matter in the soil, healthy soil life and biodiversity and... remove the tulips with bulb and all as soon as possible after flowering and you can plant tulips in the garden with good results for years.

Polder garden Anna Paulowna mid-May

While writing this I thought 'hey, I can just go and have a look in the Poldertuin in Anna Paulowna'. It would be strange if they weren't already harvesting. Oh, too bad, they're just about to break. They are harvesting a lot, but I'm missing out on that nice chat with the volunteers (retired bulb growers who maintain the Poldertuin). You know what, I'll just go and have a fish in Den Oever, I've got a notebook with me, so I can continue writing for the newsletter there.


Karate

Or I'm going to write the text of the Tulip 'Karate' . Yes, that's something, one of the most beautiful new introductions on the Fluwel site is there without a photo and without text. Nothing sold yet, sometimes I'm really a big turd. The photos are there now, I'm writing the text here now with a view of the harbor, a fish quartet and a fruity Pinot. Just doing my best to make you enthusiastic about this Tulip , she is more than worth it, she is beautiful.

Karate

But we were at the harvesting of the Tulip bulbs . Yes, sorry, I have to be strict, it really is better for both of us. Figuratively speaking, tears sometimes roll down my cheeks when I receive yet another email about completely failed Tulip plantings. Ground fire and bad soil can really ruin plantings. A waste of all the effort and it could have been prevented.

Polder garden

She is almost 7 months old. I have been working for 1 day since my burnout. She never expected it, it would really take another week or so but it is a girl; Paulina. Clearly the language of two ladies who have become Grandmas for the first time. Do you have mussels? Sorry ma'am, completely gone. They will come back tomorrow morning. And it is a three hour journey, right, and they don't mind at all. But yes, it is also three hours back and yet they come to look at the little one. That is sweet of them. We also had a nice meal with them at Loetje. Oh yeah? What did you eat?.. And it went on and on, what happy people. Two new Grandmas, how nice it is to witness the birth of two new Grandmas. Or well, one is Grandma, the other almost but she is already happy and that while they actually do not look like Grandmas yet.

Polder garden

Sjips completely lost, the Tulips . No, it is of course true that among you readers there are also more experienced gardeners who think my plea about digging them up is nonsense. They know how to take good care of the Tulips until well into June, dig up the bulbs neatly as soon as the leaves have died off and in the autumn they think carefully when planting that the bulbs end up in a different place in the garden. Or there are people who let me know that they have Tulips in the garden that have been coming back for years while they remain in the ground year after year. There are always exceptions, I myself also have a red Tulip at our house that has been there for at least 25 years, about 10. But it is also true that I have planted hundreds of them over the years. If 10 bulbs then reliably come back, you cannot really claim that a Tulip naturalizes well. It is also possible, but for the home gardener, most of us who actually intended to do it right this time but never get around to it; remove the tulips after flowering! Give pathogens as little chance as possible to nest in your garden soil for a long time.


But what about those Tulips on the Fluwel site that you say do naturalize? That's right, I shouldn't do that either. I'm sure that more things go wrong than right. It's really not true that if you plant a bunch of Tulips of these types in your garden, they will still look as fresh and mischievous in three years as they did in the first year. These Tulips are also simply less reliable than a Daffodil , a Muscari or a Hyacinth . It really won't work. What you could try with these Tulips , which do naturalize better than average, is to meander them loosely as individuals through your border. Plant a Tulip here and there and at least 15 cm deep and if you're lucky, a Tulip here and there will keep coming back for years. As individuals, they can sometimes keep coming back well, but planted together as a bunch, it often goes wrong and these Tulips also disappear within a few years. Wrong 99 times out of 100. Diseases take hold of them and they become less beautiful every year.
So yes, we offer Tulips that are suitable for naturalization but actually they are Tulips that come back better than average. In my opinion a Tulip does not go wild in the Western European climate but a good gardener is often able to let the Tulip come back for several years under good conditions.

The Wadden Sea near Den Oever, here you can do some mudflat walking.

Yes, we are all very unanimous; the shrimps please. Brown or white? Brown please. The table next to me, 4 grannies who do look like grannies. And yes indeed, the grandchildren right away. Elise's horse is so big, it suits her perfectly, they go so well together. She had a pony, didn't she? Well no girl a horse, picked up in Diksmuide in the fall. Whoop, there they are again talking about a B&B where the other was recently... and the next day; nice walk... and it goes on like that. 'It will be fine by itself' I hear again now. In short, time to stop writing, back home.

I have one more housekeeping announcement to make: Today (Sunday, May 21) is the last day that you can order the summer flowering bulbs from us.

Kind regards,

Carlos van der Veek.

Ps. If you drive from Den Oever towards Den Helder over the Bierdijkerveldweg along the dike, you might just come across such scenes between Oosterend and Stroe ☺.

Here on this dike I took the photo of the Wadden Sea.