Inside Information
If you are as much of a Daffodil lover as I am, I think you might appreciate this preview of our Fluwel Special Narcissus collection.
They are not yet ready to be ordered, as Pauliina and I are still busy fine-tuning the web shop, but you can mark your calendar: on February 1, they will go online! To be precise, the web shop will open very late Saturday night, at exactly midnight, as soon as it is officially the first of February. I wanted to let my readers know, as I know some people have a wish list ready, and some varieties are sold out before you know it.
The Daffodil enthusiasts, or the Daffoholics, as I’ve heard them be called in England, are probably going to be staying awake to order at the first possible moment. Quite like my daughters fifteen years ago, when they wanted to go to the One Direction concert. It’s almost the same!
I always feel like making up words like Daffoholics is a very English thing to do, but I could be wrong. I always have a hard time translating it into Dutch once I get home. Though the other way around is not any better. My daughter Pien does the English version, and she sometimes has to call me to ask what I want her to make of some made-up word of mine. (Yes, and I often use ‘having some artistic freedom’ as an excuse to just change sentences :) - Pien.) But the English Daffoholics are lucky: for them, the web shop opens at 23:00 on Saturday night, so they can go to bed a whole hour earlier.
But before I go completely off-track once again, I do want to emphasize that, if you have favourite Daffodils or varieties you just really want to have, you must order at your earliest convenience. The Daffodils in this collection are not called Special for nothing: for some varieties, we only have maybe ten or fifteen bulbs available.
In other years, we have seen some varieties being completely sold out before the next newsletter even arrives in your inbox on Sunday morning. If your reason for waiting to order is that you want to combine the special Daffodils with our regular spring assortment once those become available, I have good news for you. Because we wait to send out flower bulbs until you can actually plant them, we have the option of combining orders if you order more than once.
Pauliina has added this new and incredibly easy-to-use function to our web site. This way, you only play for shipping once, and all you need to combine your orders is the order numbers. So place the special Daffodils order early, and add your regular assortment bulbs later on.
Begonias always make me happy, and I am pleased to see they are slowly starting to get the recognition they deserve. They haven’t been available in the shop for two weeks as I am writing this, yet many varieties are already over halfway gone. I’ve asked Saskia, one of the Begonia growers, if she has some extra stock for us. The most popular options are by far the Begonia boliviensis.
Begonia boliviensis knol
I am extra happy about the Begonia’s popularity this year because of the amazing quality of the tubers. I’ve never planted a Begonia that disappointed me, and the same goes for Zantedeschia’s, now that I think about it. They are extremely reliable in a pot as well, perfect choices for balcony-gardeners. Their flowers will be your loyal companions for weeks on end, you can enjoy these plants all summer long, and sometimes even into autumn, too.
The colour yellow also seems to be making a bit of a comeback lately. Sunclub has been our lowest selling Zantedeschia for years, but suddenly, she is in our Zantedeschia top three. I’m delighted to see it. Captain Fresco, a white one, is the most popular Zantedeschia at the moment. But the yellow being so unpopular has always kind of surprised me. I really want to offer a yellow varieties of all the kind of flowers we have, but it hasn’t really made us a lot of money. I just personally feel that we cannot leave yellow out. I personally really like them, and that is not just because Daffodils are yellow. (The Daffodil is also the only kind of flower where the colour yellow does very well, but you could probably guess that for yourself :) ). Yellow Tulips, yellow Dahlias, they are never a bestseller. Let’s have a look.
If we look at how much of a variety is still in stock at the moment, these yellow and pink Dahlias seem to be kind of similar, but you have to remember that we have maybe five yellow Dahlias, versus about fifty kinds of pink.
Even this Dahlia, Kelvin Floodlight, is only selling moderately fast. It surprises me, because this is without a doubt one of our most reliable Dahlias. She makes tons and tons of flowers, and they are big, too. If you want to try a yellow Dahlia, I highly recommend starting here.
But everyone who has ever has a shop knows that it is sometimes baffling what sells and what doesn’t. This year, one of the surprises is Zundert Mystery Fox. Usually, Z-varieties aren’t the most popular no matter how beautiful they are: they are simply always on the bottom of the page. But Zundert Mystery Fox has somehow defied the odds, and she is incredibly popular this year, People are having fun scrolling, I think.
Time to go. See you next week,
Kind regards,
Carlos van der Veek
Carlos van der Veek
