Beans, lettuce, carrots and almost any vegetable or crop you can think of: the seeds are on the shelves of the showroom on the AG Bellstraat. Zaadhandel Van der Wal in Hoogeveen is a candy store for every hobby gardener. Because it has been supplying the environment with high-quality seeds for a hundred years, the company was awarded the Royal Supplier designation.
“Very nice. Also grateful and proud that I can experience this as the third generation,” says Henk van der Wal, director of the seed trade. He shows the black seed that started it all with his grandfather: spurrie seed. This used to be an important agricultural crop, because it wanted to grow well on poor sandy soils.
“Black seed. But I’m not on it!” laughs Van der Wal. “My grandfather sold a lot of them. That also earned him the nickname ‘Spurrie King’.”
According to Johann Bisschop of Historische Kring Hoogeveen, it was no coincidence that the seed trade could flourish in Hoogeveen. “That has everything to do with the peat,” Bisschop explains. “If you excavate peat, a new type of soil is created: valley soil. That is very suitable for horticulture.” After 1900 that was exactly what happened in the areas around Hoogeveen. More and more horticulturists came to which the seed trade supplied.
The sale of agricultural crops such as spurry and buckwheat was important at that time. But around 1980 Henk van der Wal changed course. He has switched from agricultural crops to vegetable garden crops. Special packaging machines have been purchased for this purpose. “Filling those small bags by hand, as my grandfather and father did, was no longer possible,” says Van der Wal.
View our report on Zaadhandel Van der Wal here: