Phals in need of care

[NYCorchidman]

While the quality of some grocery bought orchids (mainly phals) may be questionable from time to time, I do find some good phals from these much cheaper routes.

As the orchid kid mentioned above, I too inspect plants very closely to avoid any problem.
I'm not into "saving" plants as I'm more into growing healthy plants that grow and flower well already.
Anything less is a waste of time and space for me unless something I have gets sick for some reason and that happens to be a special plant for whatever reason, yeah, then I do all I can to get it back to health. usually not very successful or very time consuming.

Back to supermarket bought phals, these are cheap and meant to be sold for just flowers, but I don't think these are meant to be crappy plants necessarily.

It is true though that the longer they sit in a store with poor care, the worse they tend to get.

The key is find the fresh and healthy looking flowers and check the plant leaves and roots as much as possible before buying it (or them).

I have bought a few beautiful phals from these cheaper sources in the past years. All of them alive and blooming every year!

[The Orchid Kid]

I got two from Dobbies for £3 each. Some pics of them are in a different thread
http://www.orchidboard.com/community...ing-phals.html

Out of about 20-30 in the discount section only these two were really worth taking a punt on IMHO. Most in such sales are beyond saving, or at least will take a lot of time and for the money saved is often not worth it.

However it's always worth a look as a few bargains can be had if you look and check em out well.

[verian]

Hi! It seems that Dobbies at Carlisle sell them off cheaper and they have just finished flowering the flower stems still on them showing colour and the plants are in good health

[FSUOrchids]

Originally Posted by WhiteRabbit

Well, from the store's (and their supplier's) standpoint - they are a cash crop - store probably returns un-sold ones to the supplier, so it's not worth it to the store to spend time (time is money!) having someone care for the plants

Yes, my understanding is that they write off the unsold plants if they are a major retailer, and either return them to the supplier or just throw them out. This is one of the reasons you can go somewhere like Lowe's in the US here and they will sell you a plant for dirt cheap if it has stopped blooming. The average person is not going to buy an orchid without flowers on it or if it's not in great shape.