Sensiplant at Dijk van Dijk

Dijk van Dijk are growing Hydrangeas on 5 hectares of glasshouse and 4 hectares of field containers. The van Dijk brothers started their site together in 1980. At the moment, they are growing different types of pot plants, according to Leen van Dijk on an area of 7300 m2 in size. Since 2001, his son Robin van Dijk has also been working in the company. The site has exclusively been growing Hydrangeas since 2000 now, with Ficus in the warmer part of the site to fill the winter gap.

Dijk van Dijk started to measure the substrate humidity content using Sensiplant at de Hooflaan 17 in De Lier in mid-September. We spoke to Leen van Dijk about this.
                 

What was the most important reason for you to start working with the Sensiplant?
“The idea behind this was to obtain reliable information about the condition of the soil humidity and water absorption - a system enabling you to frequently check the plants' soil humidity in different substrates which could be done using sensors". Eventually, Leen van Dijk would really like to link these sensors to the irrigation computer to be able to automatically start irrigation using the measurements obtained.

What additional value does Sensiplant offer when growing Hydrangeas?
“Hydrangeas are plants which are very difficult to grow in the winter period.  In our experience, the biggest contributor to this problem is the humidity content in the pot. Sensiplant offers a solution to this. It offers us a much more reliable picture of the humidity situation. We should be able to prevent problems such as leaf curl this way," says Leen van Dijk.