Originally Posted by dounoharm (Post 815857)

I am beginning to develop a taste for the just add ice company...after the grocery store supply is a month or so old, they look pretty ragged, the blooms fade, they look 'dead' to most folks....I wait till the bitter end, and make an offer on whats left....and the lady at the store generally takes it, like $2 each...I get them home, take them out of those pots, and trim them up. they usually start to bloom again in about 3 months, depending on the season, either on a new spike or off the old one...some have 3 spikes on them! so, I also have taken that moss off and put them in bark... I put a few corks in the bottom of the original cache pot, and I give them as gifts wherever I go, doctors, friends, whoever! I instruct folks on how to take care of the orchid, and bring a few folks into the fold of orchid loving! using this method enables me to drink more wine to collect the corks!

Originally Posted by dounoharm (Post 815857)

I am beginning to develop a taste for the just add ice company...after the grocery store supply is a month or so old, they look pretty ragged, the blooms fade, they look 'dead' to most folks....I wait till the bitter end, and make an offer on whats left....and the lady at the store generally takes it, like $2 each...I get them home, take them out of those pots, and trim them up. they usually start to bloom again in about 3 months, depending on the season, either on a new spike or off the old one...some have 3 spikes on them! so, I also have taken that moss off and put them in bark... I put a few corks in the bottom of the original cache pot, and I give them as gifts wherever I go, doctors, friends, whoever! I instruct folks on how to take care of the orchid, and bring a few folks into the fold of orchid loving! using this method enables me to drink more wine to collect the corks!

Originally Posted by jkofferdahl (Post 815904)

Having been mostly out of growing orchids for several years, I'm honestly surprised to learn that the company is still in business/concept still around. The whole idea seems somewhere between sadistically alien and laughably absurd. Ice is, by definition, frozen. The orchids they sell under the concept are tropical. So we're going to put ice (think polar) on the roots of a tropical plant? Even if the grower can keep it off the roots, the water itself will still be virtually ice cold.

Other issues? Well, the amount of water in an ice cube is pretty small. I suppose I could survive for a while on an ounce of water a day, but it wouldn't take me long to be to a point of being really cranky from thirst, and I'm sure I'd be sagging. And no matter how little one chooses to use fertilizer on a plant, it'll be used. When I use fertilizers I also like to flush pots before AND after weak application. The amount of water in one ice cube won't flush an ant farm tunnel.

This is a vile sales ploy which sells a lot of orchids, I'm sure. I'm equally sure that it eventually leads to some real disappointment. To me, this is a business comparable to a puppy mill which sells their pups directly to testing labs - goners either way.