Orchid abuse - WHY?

[Wild Orchid]

It appears that most of us have started off on a same note that is buying/receiving a Phal with severely compromised roots, packed in moss, drowned or serverely dehydrated..... That's why we have a post and a sticker called The Phal abuse ends here.
http://www.orchidboard.com/community...ends-here.html

Have you ever wondered what's the root of the problem? What's behind this very fact that being rather expensive, Phals are so severely neglected, mistreated, abused? Given that orchids become rather common, we can't attribute this to simply sellers' lack of knowledge or interest, can we?

I know, there are "growers" and "sellers", but on average, when you buy a perrenual or an annual, they do not require emergency treatment. Typically, one buys a reasonably healthy plant in somewhat reasonable potting, even when buying tropicals.

Why is it so different with orchids that we are forced to learn Orchids First Aid & CPR??? Will this practice ever change?

Thoughts? Comments?

[AnonYMouse]

They are just misunderstood.

[Andrew]

Spot the difference:
Asian Exporter - Thai Orchid Nursery
US Orchid Nursery - Carter and Homes
Box Store - Home Depot

I think it's very easy to attribute the poor health of the orchids many people on this forum buy to the seller's lack of knowledge or interest.

I know people on this forum get (probably understandably) offended when others snub off box store orchids but how many of those Save My Phal threads do you see from people buying from the likes of Carter & Holmes, Big Leaf, Nortons etc.

[goodgollymissmolly]

If people persist in buying mass market orchids from mass market retailers neither of whom is motivated financially to provide healthy plants, then the problems with plant quality will continue.

Plants from big box stores are the modern version of cut flowers. By providing live plants suppliers gain increased transportation survival rates allowing production facilities to be farther from prime markets and the ability to market through retailers who know or care nothing about the product. In many cases the retailer does not even own the inventory, they just provide shelf space and skim the profit after the sale.

Meanwhile our legitimate (US centric statement) small businesses who supply the hobbyists take more and more hits as the mass marketers take the casual buyer sales.

Complaining that plant quality from these sources is poor is like complaining about the quality of a used car from a buy here/pay here junk used car dealer. You get what you seek.

These plants are not intended to be healthy specimens for hobbyists. They are "cut flowers" intended for disposal when they quit blooming. There is absolutely nothing wrong with what these suppliers are doing, but buyers need to understand what they are buying. Let the buyer beware.

It seems to me that this continued discussion about poor plants from poor sources goes on and on. Just quit buying the stuff and it will go away.

[Ray]

There is another aspect of this that has often been disregarded: everything the growers do is designed for fast growth leading to rapid greenhouse turnover, and that includes feeding.

Those large operations overfeed like mad to get rapid growth, but that leads to a "crash" once it gets in the hands of the retailers and consumer. I liken it to the "sugar high" that kids get when eating a lot of candy - they are happy and lively while getting the sugar, but hoo-boy, nobody wants to be the parents when they start to come down.


Ray Barkalow
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[Stray59]

What has been said in the previous posts is true, but I do remember when orchids were the "rich man's hobby" almost exclusively. Before the mass marketing in orchid plants started, you had to have pretty deep pockets to even consider purchasing what today would be considered a small orchid. I still have several catalogues from the '70's from Hausermann's and Stewart's Orchids; several of their (then new) hybrids were well over $100.00 for a very small start. My first Cattleya cost $35.00 in 1973, not including the S&H cost; it was not an awarded hybrid, came in an 6" pot, had 5 pseudobulbs and one bloom sheath. Calculating the rate of inflation, today that orchid would cost $189.08; it was a gift from my parents or else I would never have been able to afford it. A $100.00 orchid would cost $540.24 today. So the competitiveness has made the entire industry rethink it's pricing, allowing many more hobbyists than was previously possible which has allowed more commercial greenhouses to start up to supply the demand.
It is true that if you are buying from some outlet that is only acting as a middle-man, not actually raising and selling the plants, then the plants will most likely not be cared for properly and are probably not being raised to be much more than (as previously said) long-living cut flowers.
This is just to show that there are two sides to every coin when discussing economics. I'll try to look those catalogues up as it is somewhat fun to look back and see what was considered "ground-breaking" developments at the time!
Steve

[Andrew]

Interesting point, Ray. I remember being told by a someone at a large carnivorous plant nursery that they used to fertilise their plants to bring them to a salable size quickly but found that their customers were reporting high losses. They found they had to spend a few months weaning the plants off the fertiliser before selling them so they would cope better under normal carnivorous plant conditions.

[ALToronto]

I've had pretty good success with these mass market orchids from Wally World, grocery stores and HD. A No Frills phal that was a gift from my kids last Mother's Day is in bloom again, with 3 branches and over 30 flowers/buds. All I did to it was take away some of the tightly packed sphagnum and put it in a clay pot. When it stops flowering, I will pot it into lava rock, which all my other phals seem to like.

Both my Just Add Ice phals are doing great in lava rock, as soon as the blooms start dying, I cut the spikes and get 2-3 new branches. These plants are in bloom or spike continually.

The worst plants I've bought, outside of $2 rescues, are from a local, reputable grower, sold through nurseries (NOT Cloud's - they're great). Catts in sopping wet sphagnum, with most of the roots rotted. After paying full price for the first, I learned my lesson, and now look for wilted flowers so I can get a discount. No use paying full price for what will be a rescue plant. And just like with mass market phals, I take the catts out of their plastic pots, and either repot them immediately into lava rock or, if the blooms are likely to last a little while, take away some of the sphagnum and put them in clay pots.

Again, not something a beginner would know, and even full service nurseries aren't giving this kind of advice to their customers. I guess this is why we have these very active forums. Without newbies buying badly grown orchids, we'd have maybe a dozen posts per day.

[cattleya80]

In my humble opinion, I think it has more to do with the cost associated with orchid farming and distribution. From what I've read, most growers grow in moss and in warm and high humid greenhouses, alleviating the need for constant watering. These growing conditions are optimal for orchids. Also, in regards to shipping, orchids are much cheaper to ship in moss as oppose to bark.

Once these orchids reach the dry A/C air of one of those big box stores, all it takes is one watering to issue a death sentence. The only way to really get a healthy specimen from one of these stores is to grab it as soon as they arrive, avoiding that first watering.

I think the simple fact is that these stores have a specific watering regime for their house plants and they pay very little attention to orchid roots. It also doesn't help that an orchid could have rotted roots and still hold their blooms for a while, which would not alert store employees that something is wrong with the plant.

To make a long story short, it's difficult to purchase a healthy orchid from a big box store. You're better off paying a few extra bucks at an actual nursery where they have in-house botanist who know how to care for their plants.

[Vrana]

Here's my two cents (as a total orchid novice, mind you).

First off, a little background... I received my first phal as a gift. It came from a grocery store, and after a couple weeks it was dying. I tried to save it by re-potting in fresh soil (I know, I know...), moving it away from the radiator, and watering a lot less. It actually started doing better, and I bought another orchid from that same store to enjoy while the other recovered.

I snagged a couple more phals off a clearance shelf at Lowe's (at $7 each I couldn't resist) and at that point I finally did some research. I re-potted all my phals in some bark mix, trimmed off the rotted roots (there were a TON), got some fertilizer, built some humidity trays, and they're doing great. Yay! Encouraged, I bought three new orchids at a local greenhouse just last weekend. The first thing I did (after reading up on each type) was re-pot them, and wow, what a difference. By the roots alone I could tell they were much, much healthier...

But, with the exception of one rescue plant I got fairly cheap, they cost me over $30 each. Would I have bought these pricey, intimidating plants (long, detailed care sheet included!) if I hadn't first bought those cheap phals elsewhere? Probably not. Orchids have a reputation as being difficult to take care of, and orchid growers have a reputation for being weird and obsessive (you'd have to be, right, to put that much time and effort into a bunch of plants?).

How many of the people on this site have a similar story? They started off buying a supermarket orchid, just because it was there, and it was pretty, and sure, 12.99 is a bit steep for a houseplant, but you've admired them every time you went in so why not, right?

My point is, and this is all personal opinion based on my own experience and anecdotes I've read online, a casual buyer wouldn't necessarily pick up an orchid from one of the better growers in the first place. Which means there wouldn't be as many hobbyists as a result, which actually means less business for orchid growers. I certainly wouldn't argue that what these big-box stores are doing reeks of greed, indifference, or ignorance at best, but it does encourages people to try out these plants and thereby give them an opportunity to get all, you know, weird and obsessive and over them.