Treasures found at Lowes
 

Yesterday we went to Lowes to pick up a few things and I looked at their plant clearance rack. There were sooo many named and labeled orchids for bargain prices. I only got 2, a Dendrobium aggregatum v. majus and a Dendrobium Thongchai Gold 'Viroj'. The first was $3 and very healthy and the second was $4 and very healthy but smaller. I'm pretty sure they are both blooming sized. I should have grabbed more. They had all sorts of huge phals and teeny tiny phals (even a noid mottled leafed phal), bagged cattleyas and oncidiums, and quite a few healthy dendro-phals. Most of the plants were fairly healthy and most were under $6. And almost all were labeled! There were some phals barely alive just starting basal keikis for $2. Has anyone else found neat orchids at Lowes or other stores for good prices?

TheOrchidBoy:
I have purchased tons of orc's from Lowes - Our stores in Indianapolis carries lots of mini- and standard size phalaenopsis and then they have the Better-gro sleeved orchids in two sizes - small hybrid Cat's in two inch pots for $6.98 and larger, blooming size Cat's, species and inter-generics in 4 inch pots for $14.98. I have always found the sleeved orchids to be labeled and of good quality and health (If they have not been in the store too long). Manuy of the Cat hybrids are Am/AOS award winners, with many of the older Hausermann names showing up often. I have also purchased Maxillaria tennifolium, 3 types of Encyclia, four species Dendrobium, two species Oncidiums, Brassovola nodosa, Rynchostylis 'Peach', BLC. Yellow Bird, and on and on. I will continue to purchase them as long as they remain of the same quality and variety.
One note on the Dendrobium aggregatum lindleyii- they will always be very deeply wrinkled - this is natural for them. At this time of the year, (their rest period) unless the leaves are really dull and going limp, you want to water this very lightly (misting every other day) and give it a drop in temps now (during the winter months) for about 6 - 8 weeks. That is the only way to ensure bloom formation. And when they bloom they are great!
Many of the Dend's need the drier winter with a temp drop (about 15 -20 degrees lower than normal) to form blooms. Last winter I accidentally placed my Den. Ag. in a cooler bright corner right by the window and forgot to water it. About two months later I "found" it again and a bloom spike had formed, just jutting out of the side of the pseudobulb! It was a great surprise.
Well congrats on the finds - It may be worth mentioning to 'someone' that Santa could leave you a few in your stocking! The sleeves would slide tight in!
Merry Christmas!
Steve:waving
:sleigh:

I was at Lowes one day about 2 years ago and they had just got a new shipment in and were putting all of the older ones on sale.All of the little ' baggies were on sale for $1, the bigger ones were $3 and the other ones were between $3 and $6. I had a blast. Left there that day with 35 orchids for $98.00. That will probably never happen again!!!!.... Jean

If it's on clearance you can usually get everything for under a dollar. Just ask the garden manager or live plant specialist to drop the prices. My old co-worker still has my number and calls me if interesting things show up.

We have some Lowes in Canada, but not one ion my city yet. But as far as I know they don't get orchids. Likely the old importing tangle again keeps us from getting such good deals in Canada. Home Depot has only ever had fairly expensive Phals since I have been growing orchids. So no reason for Lowes to try and compete either!

Merry Christmas everyone!
The sleeved orchids that Lowes has are from Better-Gro like I said; as I understand it, this is a division of Sun Bulb Company out of Florida. I have looked at their website and it is set up for wholesalers only, unfortunately.
My Christmas wish is that Canada get more orchid suppliers - maybe a niche a Canadian member would like to try and fill?
Hope you all have a great holiday and enjoy time with the people you love!!
Steve:waving
:sleigh:

Yeah, I know! :((
I discovered a local Dollar store that started selling orchids (NoIDs, no tags, no refunds....) And then since orchids sell better than other cheap stuff, they started having more stock. Then the 2nd Dollar store started competing with the first one bringing in more interesting but also much higher in price plants.

This is my only source for orchids at the moment as Safeway and Lowes are out of reach with their price range. Inevitably, plants start wilting and the store owners still want to sell them with some discount.... Unfortunately, the one with better selection would not give you a reasonable discount till the plant is truly dead.....

We need more vendors and good competition here in Canada for sure.

Let's put it on our Christmas list for Santa! :sleigh:
please.gif:youcandothis:

Lilia

I hope that Canadian marketers start catching on to the Orchid craze - there is money in them thar pockets and purses! Maybe Santa answered your wish - Let's hope so!
Have a great holiday season and a Happy New Year!

Steve :waving

Growing an orchid to a maturity and quality that makes you proud takes time (a lot of time), water, fertilizer, various biocides, pots, media, energy (gas and electricity at least), and did I mention time, a lot of time? It can takes years for some plants to bloom and most are not very quick even if they are known to bloom at an early maturity.

So the original cost of a plant is peanuts versus the time and money spent raising it. Common sense suggests that a cheap plant from a source that knows and cares nothing about plants is a statistical mistake. The probability of it being worth the time, effort , and expense of raising it is very low.

There are no guarantees when you spend more on the plant...but a knowledgable orchid source who wants you to return for more and actually has knowledge about orchids is a much better bet. That source can actually help you with problems after the sale assuming you display some learning ability and are not asking for help every week or repeatedly for the same thing.

It's penny wise and pound foolish to buy big box orchids. There is no upside to it. A friend of mine bought a new 47" TV and bragged about the deal he got. I happened to be visiting him when a basketball game was on. Every time a quick action like a dunk occurred the screen showed digital pixelation so bad you could not see the picture. I told him he got a really good deal for showing landscapes and still lives, but next time he got a TV he might consider a higher screen refresh rate....and a less "good deal".

Molly there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting a named orchid from a big box store for $2-3 where online it'll be $25-30 for the same orchid. It's a great way to start a collection because they usually offer easy to grow and flower for the beginners.

Inexpensive orchids are a great way to learn and experiment with growing conditions without guilt when one goes to orchid heaven.

It is the way the world business model works. It is nice to have people introduced to orchids at a low cost that come predominantly from non-US sources. However, every year we continue to lose more US breeder/growers and the same trend is happening in Europe. There are some negative consequences to this. Slipper orchids (Paphs, Phrags) and a number of other less frequently grown orchids have so far escaped this trend. I think that those of us who can do it financially should really try and support the commercial growers that are near to us.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

I always try to support my local orchid vendor (Plant House) before looking somewhere else. I also hate to see the orchid vendors close down. Sometimes I just can't resist saving an orchid from Lowes.

All the orchids I've seen in Toronto-area stores are grown locally. Shoppers tend to avoid imported plants, and then there is the shipping hassle. So due to high heating costs for 5 months of the year, and high minimum wages for employees, I'm amazed that the prices are as reasonable as they are. A NOID phal in bloom retails for $10 at Wal-Mart and discount grocery stores, about $13-18 at HD and Lowes, depending on the decorative pot it's placed in. At Whole Foods, it's $20 and up, but the plants are clearly of better quality.

What I don't see is variety. It is impossible to find a den or a cattleya in a big box or grocery store.

Rescue plants are also difficult to find. HD and Walmart actually send back the plants that don't sell by the time the blooms drop. They're big enough to dictate to their vendors that shelf space in the stores comes with a money back guarantee. Whole Foods would rather throw away a plant out of bloom than create a market for rescue orchids.

So that leaves grocery stores, where I have picked up rescue plants once, but I had to find a store clerk and offer to take the dessicated mini phals off his hands. Otherwise, they would have thrown them out.

On the other hand, this shortage of quality orchids forces us to support local growers who are serious about producing quality plants that do well in our challenging climate. I will not welcome a flood of cheap Asian orchids.

I found lot of clearance orchids at Lowes. During summer, they put the plants in clearance racks out in the full sun but still they are priced like $10. Thats too much to pay for an orchid that is almost dead. I tired asking the manager to price them down but they kept telling me its already marked down. So I ve seen lot of orchids die on the racks just because they can't mark them down more. Its rally sad. But this winter (around February), I went to Lowes to buy some stuff and happen to stop by the garden store and found a rack full of orchids all priced at $5 or less! These are the ones that they typically sell of like $30. They were all tagged and in good condition except for the flowers which looked out of shape. The birds in the green house apparently eat the flower petals and when that happens, they put them on clearance!! Thats the first time Ive seen they put orchids on clearance for that low prices (at leat in my area). The person who were handling them that time was a nice old guy who explained to me how to take care of them etc. He even marked down a regular priced orchid I was admiring. Ofcourse its flowers were bitten off by birds so it would have probably end up in the clearance rack some time later anyways.

But when I went last week they had some out again on the clearance racks but this time they were marked at $10. I told the manager that I brought clearance orchids for $4 on February and her reply was she's never seen things mark down for that low prices! I didnt argue with her (I am not good at that sort of stuff).

So I don't know if the clearance prices depends on the season or the person who are marking them down. Anyways, I'll keep looking for clearance orchids at Lowes since I am student and I dont have a lot to spend on orchids though they help me a lot to de-stress.

I only brought my first orchid from a nursery. Payed $20 for it and I almost killed it a month or two later when I repotted it! As a beginner, that sorts of puts you off. But then I found clearance orchids at Walmart and Lowes. A year later, they are all healthy and blooming right now. I am so happy knowing I managed to at least save those plants and I am glad I didnt give up on growing orchids. I managed to get my first orchid back to health and it is doing well. No spikes yet but I am just happy its not dead : )

Orchidbuds;
Our Lowes (Indianapolis, Indiana) often marks their "past-their-prime" orchids down to $5.00 and I have seen them marked at $3.50. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to it, and I think it does depend on which manager is on duty at the time of mark-down. What gets me is, since it was just Easter, they had gotten tons of phalaenopsis in; one display of mini-phalaes was RIGHT in front of the front doors, getting blown around every time the door opens. With temps around 30-40 degree (F), this is the WORST place to put flowering orchids!
There is something that you mentioned that concerns me somewhat - that about the birds eating the petals. I have never seen or heard of birds having anything to do with orchid flowers, but you may have bird species we don't have. I would really check the plants over to make sure you are not looking at slug or snail damage, instead of birds. Of course, here you usually see the plants just need a good watering or that other customers have broken the flower spike - OR, they put them in direct drafts of cold air. Anyway, I have snagged several of these neglected NOids as they are good to experiment with. Regardless of name status, they also give you invaluable experience at a very reasonable price; if you can revive one and get it to bloom, you have learned something that not all orchid collectors can do!
Enjoy your inexpensive orchids and value them like they cost a fortune - the joy they give is not based on their price or their name, but in what you get out of them.
Best of luck-
Steve

For me $5 is way to much to pay for an orchid from Lowes or someplace, especially a noid. :) My rule is $4 or less for tagged orchids and even less $$ for noids, that's so I don't buy too many. $50 at the Plant House, not a problem. Maybe it's because I know that orchids from my local vendor are very good quality and who knows how the Lowes orchids have been treated.

Here in SW Missouri there is not even one orchid grower within 200 miles. If I want to buy an orchid on the spur of the moment I go to Lowes or the local grocery store. I have NO orchid grower that I am 'putting out of business'! ...Jean

Atleast the Lowes in my area keeps their orchids in a heated green house during the winter. Its only in the summer they put the clearance once outside in scorching heat. : (.
I was skeptical about birds eating the flower petals too. So when I took them home, I checked to make sure there were no slugs or bugs on the plants before re-potting them. But then my friend told me she has seen these tiny birds who lives in the Lowes greenhouse pecking at the flowers too. Since the plants I brought looks healthy and have new perfect blooms right now, I think the birds must have eaten the petals!
I can't tell you how happy I feel when I see these once neglected plants rebloom. I might try to branch out more later, but for now, I am happy with my < 5$, unbranded, commercially grown, rescued phals. : )

I don't know any local orchid growers in my area. The one I brought from the local nursery had a brand name tag. Trader Joes is another place where I ve seen orchids for sale in my area. They have more variety than Lowes and at lower prices (< $15). I really have a hard time keeping myself from not buying those beautiful oncidiums and dendrobiums. I keep telling myself, its too expensive and you might kill it! Maybe later..when I have more space and experience : )

Here's the Dend. lindleyi that I rescued and then mounted. It is doing really well and putting out lots of roots now.

http://i1357.photobucket.com/albums/...psbaf1e48b.jpg

http://i1357.photobucket.com/albums/...psf87b6acb.jpg

My first AOS award was on a Better Gro Baggie orchid rescued from Lowes. I also picked up a huge lindleyi and a Catt cross in sheath. The BG baggies just arrived so I picked through them. $12 for a species Den in a 4" pot overgrown is a steal.

My visit to Lowes today
 

Hi,
I went to Lowes today to pick up a few plants for my garden outside. I had gift cards and decided to look through the indoor garden center, surprise, surprise that I would do that :rofl:

Well, I wish I had been there when the orchids fisrt arrived because I am sure some other really nice ones were sold. There were still some nice ones left (some of them too similar to what I already have in my collection), some were suffering from lack of proper care.

The Better Gro baggies had a few nice ones or at least I thought so when I looked. I tried to pick the best ones. The pseudobulbs look really plump and healthy to me.

They had small Sogo Vivien, which I really love and recently bought one of at Parkside. I got one for myself and one for a teacher. I got one other miniature too. The roots look good (picture will be added). They were $8.98 a piece.

I got two blooming ones. The blooms are pretty and the pale one seems to have a scent :). That one is almost out of bloom and I asked if they would discount it, usually don't ask, but figured why not. She said no, only if it is dead or almost dead :hmm. I had to laugh to myself, on the inside, because no matter how cheap it was I wouldn't buy a "dead" plant. I decided to buy it anyway since I thought it was really pretty and hope to get it bloom again.

I know health wise the big box stores are a risk, but I decided to take it and keep them away from my favorites. I was happy to see so many with ID tags.

Here are some more pictures

Here are the last of them. The nodosa bloomed in the bag. There were a couple of others for sale that had bloomed in the bag too.

Looks great! I have also picked up some great orchids at Lowes!

Nice Haul. I've gotta check out Lowes more often :)

Nice! Lucky you! I have only seen phals on discount at lowes in my area. I have yet to find the bagged BG ones on sale.

Thank you, I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't think I would find anything much there.

---------- Post added at 02:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:49 PM ----------

Carrie,
I thought the same thing. That might be a dangerous habit. :)
~SJF

---------- Post added at 02:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:50 PM ----------

I didn't get any of the ones on discount. They were in really horrible shape. The baggies were $12.98 each. that is the regular price. I thought these were worth that price. I have some potting to do this weekend :)

You're lucky to find such nice ones! Lowes around here haven't had the bag babies for quite a while. *sigh*

I agree, I was very pleasantly surprised. They didn't have them at mine for awhile either. Although, I hadn't been there in a couple of months. I may have missed other nice ones. I hope this means that they are stepping up the quality they carry. They need to educate their staff how to properly care for them though. There are only a few that I have met that seem to care or have the knowledge about taking proper care of the orchids.

I've met none that even know how to say "phalaenopsis", let alone care for ANY of the plants.

It is a shame. They could have a small workshop or required online class to teach them. More of the orchids would sell that way too.

I picked up the same Enc and yellow Epicatt that you got! Great minds think alike. :) Mine are now happily growing in the greenhouse.

:) How long have you had them?

Just got them last weekend. :)

I guess they send the same ones to all the stores.

Did you repot yours? I flushed the media with water and almost all of the roots plumped up and looked viable :))

I went to lowes today(of course I HAVE to look at the orchids) they had a LOT of Phal. sturartiana crosses P. Cassandra.They are quite nice and still in bloom. They were priced at 9.99 I took 2 of them and when I got to the register they rang up at 4.99. Woo Hoo...Jean

Lucky on the prices :)

Pictures please

You just burst my bubble. A few weeks back I got a P. Cassandra from Lowe's for 9.99 and it rang up 7.99 and I thought I was golden. Ah well, still happy with it.

Beautiful, wish I saw that one. I would love to find mottled leaves in Lowes