I'm sorry to hear that you have been having trouble with the phals at your big box store. In Florida the humidity is so high ususally that you can let phals dry out for several weeks in some cases, but unfortunatly root rot is also a very easy thing to have happen since it is so moist here. The strange thing is that in all of the US, Florida and Hawaii are probably the easist places to grow phals. If you just put them in some decent medium and keep them shaded, the humidity keeps them alive even if you forget to water. In fact, some of my best phals have been the ones I've repotted and almost ignored. If your store switches to phals in decent medium and doesn't overwater you should have much better success. Most of the big box stores around here get their plants from Kerry's which is the largest orchid producer in the country and is local. They do a very good job and their orchids usually look great at the big box stores so you should ask the managers if you could order your plants from Kerrys. The only problem with kerry's is they don't always label their plants with specific hybrid names. I have gotten lucky a few times though and have bought two really good orchids from Home Depot that were grown by Kerry's for 10 dollars each and they had hybrid names on their tags.
Last edited by Gwenchanter; 05-30-2008 at 12:10 AM..
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