Electroculture in the Netherlands: from Andijk 1909 to your own vegetable garden

If you think of France or England when it comes to electroculture, you're missing an important part of the story. The Netherlands, in fact, had its own electroculture history, with a garden attraction in Andijk, a trial by Philips in the Beemster, and seventy hectares on the Hoge Veluwe. Below you can read exactly how that went.

In short

• On 14 June 1909, an electroculture installation opened in Andijk that you could visit for a fee.
• That same summer, the firm Boeke & Huidekoper laid out five hectares of electroculture in the Haarlemmermeer.
• The results, published in 1910: strawberry +128%, sugar beet up to +140%, bean +52%, potato +40%.
• In early 1920, Philips, with Dr. Gilles Holst, and the Provincial Electricity Company prepared a large trial in the Beemster.
• In 1931, the Hoge Veluwe hosted a seventy-hectare trial, attended by the mayors of Apeldoorn and Barneveld.
• In France, Christofleau's customer Claret had a bailiff officially record more than double the grape harvest in 1922.

Andijk, 1909: a garden attraction with ticket sales

On 14 June 1909, an electroculture installation opened in Andijk, in North Holland, that you could simply come and view for a fee. Fellow villagers Jb. Prins Gz., W. Kooiman P.Pz., and G. Prins Jbz. let visitors in for fifty cents; those from outside Andijk paid one guilder, and anyone who wanted to come more often could buy an annual pass for two guilders fifty. Electroculture in 1909 was therefore not some obscure idea held by a single person, but a local attraction that people made a special trip for.

That same summer, the firm Boeke & Huidekoper from Groningen and Haarlem, under the direction of engineer R. Harkema, laid out five hectares of electroculture on the farm "Mentz" in the Haarlemmermeer, half of it planted with sugar beets. The announcement promised between 25 and 120 percent more yield.

The Haarlemmermeer: the figures on paper

A year later, in the summer of 1910, the Utrecht newspapers published the results of that trial. Strawberries yielded 128 percent more, sugar beets between 120 and 140 percent, beans 52 percent, and potatoes 40 percent, with an average that the newspapers put at "30 to 35 percent." The costs: eleven hundred guilders for laying out three hectares, ninety guilders per hectare per year for maintenance. For that time, this was a considerable investment, and the results were widely publicised.

Philips and the Provincial Electricity Company: the 1920 Beemster trial

Electroculture also attracted big names in the Netherlands. In early 1920, the Provincial Electricity Company of North Holland, Smit's Transformer Factory from Nijmegen, and Philips, with Dr. Gilles Holst as the physicist involved, prepared a trial in the Beemster. The plan: to step up ordinary 220 volt three-phase current, via Philips rectifiers, to 70,000 to 100,000 volts. State agricultural instructor C. Nobel from Haarlem and J.A.J. Sybrandi of the electricity company were involved. The fact that an institution like Philips and a provincial energy company invested their time and engineers in such a trial shows how seriously the subject was taken at the time.

The Hoge Veluwe, 1931: seventy hectares attended by two mayors

The largest Dutch experiment came in 1931. On seventy hectares of land belonging to D. Bos near Nieuw-Milligen, on what the newspapers called "the most infertile soil of the Hooge Veluwe," P. Lépine from Toulouse installed his system: metal poles with copper or galvanised iron wire running into the ground. Several plots were laid out side by side, and the Netherlands Heath Society provided two comparison plots with grass, clover, and lupine. The mayors of Apeldoorn and Barneveld were present at the opening, and W. baron van Nagell expressed optimism in the press about the prospects for this poor sandy soil.

France as inspiration: a grape harvest with a bailiff's deed

While officials and engineers in the Netherlands were experimenting, the Frenchman Justin Christofleau was building his own name in those same years with smaller scale but strikingly well documented results. At the property of his customer Claret in Vertus, a bailiff officially recorded in 1922 that 924 grapevines treated with the device produced one hundred comportes of grapes, compared to 199 comportes from two thousand untreated vines at a neighbour's. Christofleau's book, regularly cited in Dutch and Flemish newspapers of the 1930s, also mentioned a vineyard in Vertus that went from 600 to 1016 kilos of grapes. That same principle, a conductive rod in the ground, is exactly what today's copper electroculture stakes build on.

A tradition to continue yourself

From ticket sales in Andijk to the Philips engineers in the Beemster: the Netherlands has its own rich electroculture history, even though it is not widely known. What all these nineteenth and twentieth century gardeners and engineers had in common was, above all, curiosity: they set something up, watched what happened, and passed the story on. That is exactly what a copper electroculture stake still invites you to do today. You can read how best to place it in placing electroculture antennas, and the broader history from Nollet to Lakhovsky is covered in electroculture: a centuries-old gardening tradition rediscovered.