Preventatives/New Plant treaments

[rvnhawk]

Do you all have any treatments you do when you bring a new plant in? I know you should quarantine. But I mean, such as spray or treat with neem oil or other insecticide on the off chance there are bugs - or do you wait to see if you see any? Do you do an initial fungal treatment when you bring in a plant or only if you see a problem?

Asking because I'm new to this and have ordered a few orchids from 2 different sources that should get here at the same time, so I'm thinking about just putting them together in the same room, because I has that "Catticus pesticus" that I am more worried about and have only one safe room right now.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

If the 2 different sources are in the US, typically there isn't a huge issue, and therefore, the hardcore preventative treatments, in my opinion, are not terribly necessary upon receipt of them. You can just do a quarantine, and see what happens. If nothing happens, then in they go with the rest of the bunch.

However...

If those 2 different sources happen to be out of the country, then yeah, you gotta do the whole "preventative" treatment, quarantine, nursing them back to health, and expecting losses thing.

[rvnhawk]

Both are from in the US. One is Norman's and one is a hobby grower on eBay.

Okay, then I'll just look them over good when I get them

[Discus]

Quarantine for any new living creature is a good idea. Heck, I think towns should quarantine people before letting them in!

I have been quite rapidly expanding my collection; living in Africa, we have quite a lot of bugs hanging about the place just waiting to chomp your prized plants. You can expect good growers to send you good, healthy plants, but you can't expect them to notice 100% of every single thing - vigilance is the key! I was quite impressed when one supplier phoned me up and told me one of the plants I wanted was infested with scale which they were finding tricky to treat - did I perhaps want to not receive it in that state and replace it with something else - of course I did!

I guess some tips that might help are a *really thorough* examination of all plants (preferably using magnification) in good light; peel off any sheaths or similar (those brown papery bits) under which things might hide, and consider re-potting into known good medium (as things might well hide in the medium/on the roots). There are always some places you can't inspect and some things are really tiny and fit in the smallest spaces!

I'm not sure that a general "preventative" dose of insecticide/fungicide is a good idea; much like indiscriminate use of antibiotics has made them less and less effective, you'll also build up resistant pests in your collection - so when you really need the treatment, it might not work, because you've selected for pests that are resistant to that treatment!

Unfortunately, I also don't have anywhere I can realistically quarantine new plants, so they end up right next to all my existing ones. Got a bit of a surprise when a gift orchid (a rather magnificent in-bloom Oncidium sphacelatum) turned out to be infested with black aphid-like bugs. I didn't notice them (didn't really do a detailed enough inspection) and they multiplied to plague proportions. Fortunately, we caught it on that one plant and they didn't spread - moved it out of the collection into the bathroom, cut off all the flower spikes (which is where the critters were lurking to the point the flowers were looking sad and dying ) and sprayed it with a good dose of insecticide. All better now, but we lost a stunning set of blooms

[camille1585]

I never quarantine new plants, unless I'm suspicious about one of them. New plants get looked over thoroughly, and unless I see insects, chewed parts, disease spots, etc, they go straight with the others. I will, however keep an eye on them and give them a good look over every few days in case I had missed something.

[johnblagg]

oh well odd man out here I spray with physan on a monthly basis and I do use bayer 3 in 1 when new plants come in

[rvnhawk]

Got my order from Norman's today, and visual inspection shows all is healthy. But I will be repotting as soon as I can order some media.

Can't wait until until my little minis are bid enough to bloom!