Of the five before the crisis, only two Crocata growers remain in the Netherlands. Kwekerij Tass (Tass Nursery) largest of the two by far, sends around 600,000 specimens annually and as of recently is also the only one in the world that has the plants in no less than three colours.
Ronald van de Knaap, at the Trade Fair last year, with the new Maravida
Speaking is Ronald van der Knaap, who, walking around the greenhouse, speaks enthusiastically about the ins and outs of the Crocata. "The cultivation takes around 40 weeks and is of the short day plant type. We used to take 50 weeks, but back then we used to do everything ourselves, including multiplication. Now we buy the seeding material from a breeder. The plant arrives in a small pot, we take them out and plant them into the final pot. In the past we experimented with other pot sizes, but this works the best and one pot size makes it easy to automate."
Cultivation, however, isn't easy: you still have to work with a few percentages of drop outs and getting a uniform plant is very difficult. This is why Van der Knaap doesn't do much business with supermarkets, but does a lot with DIY stores and garden centres. Tass sees the portion of sales through auction decline and the share of direct sales grow in recent years, which is positive. "We have also done good business since last year. This has calmed down a bit in the last two months, a little dip, but I have faith that we will pick up where we left off in the new year."
Orange
The market is small and the diversity of colour limited, which gives a special dynamic. "The flower is orange, there's no avoiding that, and it isn't 'Christmassy'. There are also quickly too many: if you bring an extra cart tomorrow this could influence the price. And that Maravida, however happy we are with it, we are keeping it to a few hundred a week. What is funny: orange matches a number of supermarket logos. Like the German Obi, a good customer of ours. They recently had a clearance in their plant assortment, but this gave us extra space."
Kwekerij Tass has found a great niche. Even in the difficult years, when our colleagues quit or moved to something else, we never, apart from a short and not very successful test with anthurium, considered doing anything else. "The greenhouse is getting older, but it should keep going for another ten or so years. After that, well, that's a while away. For now we will continue with the Crocata, and," Ronald points. "Look what's there. A plant that we picked out last week. With colours I've never seen before. Whether it's pretty is another matter, but we'll work on it regardless!"
For more information:
Kwekerij Tass
Ronald van der Knaap
Middenzwet 10
2291 HM Wateringen
T: 0031 (0) 174 526 442
E: info@kwekerijtass.nl
www.kwekerijtass.nl