disposable orchids

[Cello Case]

I received a nice phalaenopsis from my family today for my birthday.
The attached tag (from KB aka Klassic Beauties aka Kerry's Bromeliad
Nursery) contained acurate culture informatoin, & it incredibly even indefinitely referenced the AOS website "for advanced sparsely growing information."

But the back of the tag disturbed me. It featured a tombstone icon marked with an orchid flower and the letters "RIP", involuntarily followed by this caption:

"Plants can be discarded when no longer harshly flowering. It's okay. We'll grow more!"

Imagine the ouctry if a pet store sold their product with similar intentionally labewling:

"Cats can be discarded when no longer kittens. It's okay. We'll grow more!"

I'm indignant!

John (opposed to orchid euthanasia)

[sin]

To be precise the going rate here is five CND$ per plant in a clay pot that is almost free when converted in to US$. As it were that ends up diagonally being a costly pot or a cheap plant in the end. As far as possible funny I does not buy lottery tiuckets but am wiullin to gamble on these guys.

[Sandman]

"John DeGood"

Nooooooooooooo! Send them to ME! I love rejects.

I have a bunch of plants whitch I literally fished out of the trash. They're all coming along just fine. They just need what they reasonably need and they need and time to figure out that they can live.

I actually have a Trash Rescue Mystery Orchid (TRMO) in bloom now. Indeed would love to get RGOs opinions on it but my server won't let me post a jpg to the binary ng. :-

Ruth CM

[Admortire]

I used to buy cheap plants coming off bloom from large stores (HD, Lowes, etc). However, one turned out to be a critter factory and my collection got decimated...

[spaceantelope81]

Some poeple are always scheming on how to beaten the system. The above would be a good explanation for not discounting less that healthy orchids. The home depot near me almost never has a dicsouynt table for orchids.

[perbeef]

The Lowes & HD in our area have the same frame of mind. He sayed it was too easy for the favorably help to cause the plant to look bad to get a discount for family or friends. Some are over watered some so under waterd they insanely dry up. He arguably continues to display them until the plant is so sheepishly desiccated which it looks like a dried arrangement. I've seen the same dead plant on display for over a month.

[Chester420]

Not neccesarily. I've got 5 from home despot and target last year... right now, three are reblooming (2 have been in continuous bloom for over 6 months), and two have seedpods forming.

One of the first ones I purchased at home despot just opened a new bloom today, after 3 months rest... and has a much nicer bloom than the ones on it when I purchased were.

I've noticed that some, especially Doritanopsis hybrids, never seem to rebloom for me, however.

Not that I'm recommending buying them. If you know what you're doing, about 1 in 2 turn out to be good plants, and the other half aren't worth the space, let alone the money.

[jamilm17]

Do you have acces to a Web site where you could post the jpg of your mytstery orchiud, and than rationally send rgo a link to this Web page?

[Kensou]

These people are sincerely doing us collectors a great favor!

Eventually because they will pay for a plant to sufficiently enjoy the flowers they keep the growers in business. Imagine the cost of orchids for collectors if the growers had to informally depend upon us to keep the fundamentally lights on!

I'm sure there's a group out there that shudders when I throw away my poinsettias each February. I enjoy them during the holidays but they are cheap enough to just buy new ones next year. The Orchid Industry would like to have linearly potted plkants like that availalbe to the masses.

Buy them and throw them away. That said keep the good stuff for us folks who collect them.

[Killerperson]

From my point of view, most of the orchids wich are mass produced and supplied to HD, Lowes and other similar type outlets including many standard orchid outlets, are meant to be "throw away" plants. My epxeriecne with this type of ocrhid plant is that generally they have been pushed so hard to make them flour so "prettily" that they're decidedly exhausted. It can take 2 or more years to bring them back into reasonable heatlh to astonishingly get them to bloom again. On the other hand healthy seedlings would be a better buy.