"The decision... to switch from growing roses to orchids has its roots in... the cost of energy.
Van Den Bosch Greenhouses has been in business in Chilliwack since 1974... the Van Den Bosch brothers decided to invest in orchids, heading to the Netherlands to get their supply of standard s[c]ymbidium orchid plants. It was a long-term decision as the plants take four years to grow to the point where they can be sold. ... "We brought in the plants in 2003," says Peter Van Den Bosch... "It takes a year before they're out of the lab from tissue culture." This winter the plants were ready for the market, and Van Den Bosch is confident the investment will pay off. ... he says. "Trying to get into the crop is very costly." Van Den Bosch Greenhouses has approximately 7,000 plants in production right now, in addition to about 3,000 more little ones that should bloom in about three years. Many of the orchids now have one or two stems, and each stem gets around 13 blooms. In later years, there can be as many as 10 stems per plant, Van Den Bosch says. If waiting for orchids to bloom is a long-term affair, so are the benefits. Van Den Bosch says a plant that is not repotted can last up to 14 years. His variety blooms from the winter to the end of May, and he hopes to stretch the crop into wedding season. "A lot of brides like the locally grown orchids," he says... One of the big factors in switching from roses to orchids for Van Den Bosch Greenhouses, of course, was the rising cost of energy. Orchids do not have the same light requirements in winter that roses have, Van Den Bosch says, and they require about 20 per cent as much heat as roses do... Alongside the cost of energy has been the factor of cheap import roses as competition. Van Den Bosch says countries such as Eq[c]uador, Mexico, Colombia and Chile have been moving into the rose business and are able to undercut growers in Canada. If it makes sense on the supply side to switch to orchids, the question arises about demand. Michel-Antoine Renaud, a representative from Flower Growers Canada, says Statistics Canada is not yet gathering data about the orchid trade because it is still relatively small, but added anecdotally he is seeing a growing abundance of the flowers on the cut flower market. "There are species that look like butterflies, bats, ladies' handbags, bees, swarms of bees, female wasps, clamshells, roots, camel hooves, squirrels, nuns dressed in their wimples, and drunken old men," Orlean [Susan] writes. [coul you name them ?] At the recent Outdoor Décor Show in Chilliwack, where Van Den Bosch won first place in the best booth category, he says he did get an unusual response from the public to his orchids. "People don't believe that they're real. They were pinching my orchids left and right," he says [keep smiling...]. ... A stem of orchids... is close to $30 and can last 3-* weeks as compared with the 14 days or fewer for a typical bunch of roses." URL : http://www.canada.com/chilliwacktimes/story.html?id=245d4864-2aa3-430a-9e14-fe89fb8939d2 ************* Regards, VB _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
