Dutch tomato grower Pieter van Gog will also start to grow peppers in Germany. At his German nursery Wittenberg Gemüse levelling has begun for a new greenhouse to be built next year.
"There is hardly any pepper cultivation in Germany,” says Van Gog to explain his decision to complement his tomato production with peppers. "Throughout Germany, there are only a few growers who grow peppers." The continental climate is one of the things that make it more difficult to work with peppers in Germany. But this doesn’t scare Van Gog. "Our customers are asking for it. So we’re going for it."
Luther Tomatoes
Van Gog moved to Germany in 2013. He heats 15 ha of greenhouse with the residual heat and CO2 from a nearby ammonia plant. The tomatoes are sold as Luther Tomatoes. After a rocky start they’ve found their place in the market. The production is accepted as a regional product. In fact, this year after the first harvest consumers in the region were lining up to buy tomatoes from their own region again. Tomatoes also cross the boundaries of Saxony-Anhalt and can even be found in Leipzig and Dresden, where they are also sold in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Bavaria.
Expansion
Now the 15 ha greenhouse may be expanded with another 25 ha of glass. In the meantime the zoning plan has been modified for this purpose. Van Gog is planning construction on the plot in three phases. Preparatory work for the first phase has started. "If we start building next year, the plants can go into the greenhouse in November," he calculates. Wouldn’t it have been more logical to put cucumbers in the greenhouse? After all, this he knows, from his Dutch nurseries. But Van Gog is not seeing it: "That’s not what our customers are asking for. We always do what our customers want."
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Wittenberg Gemuese
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