Ok, I will never buy another plant grown in Taiwan and shiiped over to the US again.
We just had a terrible time with our Phal. house. We had to throw out over $40,000.00 worth of plants. It all started when I went to the World Orchid Congress and bought some Phal. species from one of the Taiwanese vendors. The plants looked a little strange but I attributed it to the fact that it was January and plants might not travel that well during winter. I brought the plants home and after a couple of days I lost one or two. then another few days and I lost another and so on. The leaves just dropped off and had a watery look to them. I was quite busy at that time and within a couple of weeks suddenly it was showing up everywhere in an area around those Phals from Taiwan. We tried spraying with Physan but Physan is only good for surface contact. It did work at slowing down the problem but not controlling it entirely. We then tried Phyton 27 which seemed to help and did arrest the problem in some plants. We were still having outbreaks of this disease so I sent some samples off to the University of Minnesota and they did a lot of research on these plants for me. It was pseudomonas! Not just the common variety either. They said that they hadn't seen such a fast growing bacteria that could be seen swimming rather quickly from cell to cell. The U also said that they hadn't seen such a large number of bacteria particles invading each cell. They suggested I throw the plants and bleach the benches. We did some treatments and I was getting a bit frantic about losing my collection. As it is we lost a lot of product and my breeding program for species and hybrids in Phalaenopsis and a few other genera was really set back. Finally I read about a new product that goes into the plant and kills bacteria, fungi AND VIRUS!! I am now testing the product and it is working. We have seen streaked virus leaves in old breeding plants begin to loose their streaking and the new leaves are absolutely clean! Once I have completed my testing with some scientific evidence I will announce our results. I am always a sceptic about virus claims but this would be terrific news. So, do some of you commercial folks out there remember when the USDA sent us surveys about how what we thought about Taiwanese growers bringing in plants in pot with potting medium? Most of the US growers were against it. The Hawaiian growers tried to sue the USDA but did it in Washington rather than in Hawaii so they lost the suit. We all knew this was a trade deal and the Taiwanese pushed it through. The USDA just thought our arguments silly and that there was no problem with bringing in plants in containers in pot. It is well known that Taiwanese growers use a lot of antibiotics to control bacteria but all this does is create super strains that are hard to control. I see customers quite often bring in infected plants that have the same thing and sure enough they are planted in moss and they are directly from Taiwan. Moss isn't a bad media but when the plants come potted that way who knows what lurks down in the root system? In addition the Taiwanese get tremendous government support and in some cases direct subsidies. The Taiwanese government in one case I know of has built this whole complex for growing and shipping the plants in a huge factory like situation complete with subsidized housing for the workers. Consider what happened in Britain when the EU rammed down the throats of English farmers that they would have to accept cattle into the country being imported from Argentina often through the EU . Look what happened! Mad cow disease, hoof and Mouth and tuberculosis have now destroyed entire herds that took generations to develop. The British cow industry was really the best there was in the world and now it is just a shadow of what it was. Some of the Brits I have spoken to think that the whole thing was a conspiracy to destroy British herds thereby requiring more imported animals to take up the slack. Now we here at Orchids Limited do ship orchids to foreign countries but we always have very rigorous inspections and requirements for export. I am not against trade but I do want it to be fair. I think what would have been fair to the US growers would have been that our concerns would have been listened to and that at the very least Taiwan should have reciprocated and allowed us to send plants to Taiwan in potting media as well. It would have been fair if our government had helped us build nurseries, worker housing and distribution centers. From now on we are going to create our own species with our own breeding stock or buy from other American growers who do have not bought in to the Taiwan deal. Orchids Limited 4630 Fernbrook Lane N. Plymouth, Minnesota 55446 USA Toll-free: 1-800-669-6006 Local: 763-559-6425 Fax: 763-557-6956 Website: www.orchidweb.com Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
