Saving Un-sold Orchids from the Big Boxes

[sunny]

if you have room, just isolate them from the rest for awhile. a month or more. orchids take forever to let you know they are in trouble. once you see a healthy plant, nice roots and new growth, move them back to the other ones. you can have one place for your good to go's and one place for your ones waiting to be good to go.

hope you don't plan to buy in bulk.

carol

[seamonkey]

I'd also scan them pretty carefully for scale/mealy before bringing them home.

[Andrew]

Originally Posted by zxyqu

Well just spoke to the gardening department at Home Depot, and they confirmed my fears... They trash them.

Nurseries run at a very tight profit margin and routinely trash plants that aren't up to a saleable condition before sending them to the retail outlets rather than waste extra money and time nursing a runt. That's just what happens with a perishable commodity. Even experienced hobby growers throw out plants that aren't performing or aren't of a suitable flower quality. Why are box stores the subject of moral outrage for what is standard practice in the horticultural community.

[orchidbingo]

Originally Posted by zxyqu

Sunny, that is a really good point I didn't think of. Hmm, now I feel a little less sure of this, I dont want to kill my revived (finally) phals. Anyone have some recommendations/thoughts on this.

Can you keep your rescue 'chids in quarantine -- another part of the house perhaps-- until you are sure they are clean?

Bingo

[cneos]

Quarantine is NOT just for rescued plants. Every new plant that you bring into your growing space should be quarantined for a week to ten days to make sure that no free-loaders come in with them.

Regardless of how nice a plant looks, everything I bring home gets inspected and repotted before it finds its new home on the bench.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.