Lubera.com, the online store of our sister company, has been selling premium vegetable plants for several years. These are grown in 1.3-litre square pots, packaged with care and then reliably shipped to customers. The price for most plants is currently around EUR 5.50, with a price increase of 10% planned for 2025. But how big is this market? What are Lubera's experiences in general? We are not initially discussing which companies could produce these young plants and where they are sold, we just want to show the potential.
The fruit vegetables and raspberries...
Within the vegetable assortment, we concentrate mainly on 'high-quality' vegetables, which are traditionally sold and bought as young plants rather than as seeds, i.e., no annual lettuces, no classic cabbages, no beans...Overall, the fruit vegetables comprise the largest part of the assortment, plus important and special tubers (sweet potatoes, oca, etc.) as well as all 'eternal', herbaceous and perennial vegetables.
We produce the raspberries and all of the vegetables in the aforementioned 1.3-litre pots. This gives rise to a perhaps surprising comparison between the two groups of plants: we sell roughly the same number of raspberry plants and premium vegetable plants, in fact around 70,000.
Of course, we make slightly more turnover with the raspberry plants due to the higher plant prices, but a closer comparison quickly reveals some opposing tendencies that tend to give the vegetables the advantage: we grow and sell raspberries for 10-12 months out of the year, while the standing time for the majority of spring sales can easily be 8-12 months. On the other hand, vegetable plants (except for some perennial vegetables) have an average production and sales period of four to seven weeks. In addition, the main season falls in May, when many woody plants as well as fruit and berry plants start to give way again.
Growth trends
The vegetable category has been growing continuously since we started a few years ago: from 2023 to 2024 with approx. 20-30%. If we had been better able to overcome the delivery backlog in May (we even had to stop the ordering), we would certainly have been able to achieve an even better result. To be honest, we were also surprised by this growth in 2024: in some cases, the delivery time for vegetables was far too long, and many plants were also too large due to plant growth during this period. Considering this and the wet and cold spring weather in 2024, the continued growth is also worth mentioning.
Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention this: we are currently experiencing stagnating sales of raspberry plants online, although we don't have these seasonal problems like we do with vegetable plants – but conversely, we also have to keep plants in stock and sell them for twelve months. We assume that we will be able to double our premium vegetable plant sales in the medium term (three to four years).
The largest product groups in Lubera vegetable sales
Of the 70,000 plants sold, 20,000 are tomato plants and 25,000 are perennial vegetables, i.e. perennial vegetable plants. If only the sales of the latter in the first half of the year are taken into account to establish parity with the classic seasonal vegetable plants, there are still 20,000 perennial vegetable plants.
Figure: Distribution of the vegetable plants sold on lubera.com for the year 2024.
The largest other types of fruit vegetables and delicacy vegetables are far behind the tomatoes: 8,000 sweet potatoes, 5,200 peppers/chillies (each in roughly equal proportions), 3,600 Cape gooseberries (Physalis), 2,700 cucumber plants and finally 2,200 aubergines.
The good performance of sweet potatoes is striking; they are a reliable and steady climber among the delicacy and fruit vegetables. What is the reason for this? Word is getting around more and more that they are ultimately one of the easiest and most resilient vegetables in the garden. In other market statistics and at large chains, cucumbers usually take second place among the fruit vegetables. The fact that they don't do so well here in our premium range is certainly because they develop very quickly (the seeds can be sown without any problems) and we have not yet been able to offer significantly better varieties in terms of health and simplicity (freedom from mildew). This is precisely why we at Lubera are also working on better cucumber varieties for the garden.
Tomatoes – the outdoor tomatoes are the winners
Within the tomato assortment (46 different varieties), the outdoor tomato assortment performs best by far: 57.5% of the premium tomato plants sold are outdoor tomatoes, especially the Open Sky® tomatoes from our own breeding programme.
Figure: Comparison of the number of plants of open-field tomato varieties sold with those of the other varieties.
The more we can expand this range, improve the quality and offer more diversity in terms of shapes, colours, textures, flavours and uses, the more dominant this group will become. Additionally, we need to provide more options than the classic stake tomatoes, which are just too complex for easy production because of the space they require. Shrub tomatoes (cultivation without support and without pinching out) and determinate and semi-determinate varieties offer exciting alternatives, which are also increasingly being considered in our Lubera breeding programme.
Perennial vegetables – rhubarb, asparagus and what else?
The perennial vegetables are dominated by rhubarb (5,000 of 25,000 plants sold) and asparagus (6,500 plants). These are the classics among the perennial vegetables, but the strong performance of asparagus is surprising. The lack of asparagus pot plants that can be planted year-round is evident; there are just not enough available.
Figure: Distribution of plants sold in the ‘EverVeg®’ product line.
The few plant groups that also catch the eye with the current sales figures are the onion/leek plants with 4,600 plants sold. They are followed by tree kale (with 1,200 plants sold) and artichokes with 1,000 sales. The remaining 6,700 plants are distributed fairly evenly across a wide variety of specialities: sea kale, wasabi, many different perennial lettuce varieties and perennial leafy vegetables.
Producing and selling premium vegetable plants – the challenges
The biggest advantage of the vegetable segment is also the biggest challenge: the plants can be produced in a very short time (three to five weeks), but they also have to be delivered/sold in six to seven weeks from the end of April to the beginning of June. Conversely, this sales period at Lubera.com also fits in very well with the rest of the shrub, fruit and berry range, which is in somewhat lower demand again in May. For stationary sales outlets, an additional problem will be that the vegetable season coincides with the bedding and balcony plant season. Vegetable varieties that develop quickly will require production to be spaced out over two or three batches. On the one hand, we can only sell premium vegetables as strong plants (hence the 1.3-litre pots), and on the other hand, the plants must not grow too large for shipping purposes. However, slow-growing vegetables such as chillies and peppers (which also need more heat) can easily be produced in a single batch.
The consequences for Lubera.com and for our breeding programme
We believe that the market for high-quality vegetables will only expand in the future. Strong young plants increase the consumers’ crop safety and also allow them to gain time for an early harvest. If we also succeed in using new varieties to bring out clear advantages for easy cultivation (for easier cultivation we mean, for example, more resistant stake tomatoes, outdoor tomatoes that have a longer lifespan and more fruit sugar in melons), then there is potential for this sector to grow considerably.
In the case of perennial vegetables, the aim must be to place greater emphasis on individual future segments and also to improve them through breeding: here we are thinking primarily of tree kale and sea kale, onion plants and other groups of perennial leafy vegetables. Another exciting segment could be perennial beans and other legumes that fit particularly well in mixed plantings, perennial beds and permaculture cultivation and continuously fix nitrogen (perennial beans). Here we have exciting new plants in our breeding pipeline in the medium term.
