Phals at Lowe's

Our local HD discounts their out of bloom 'chids. Sometimes you can find a nice deal. Not too long back we picked up a Phal. amabilis for $6.

Diana

Our local home depot is so incompetent with plants that they can manage to kill rosemary and thyme. If you don't look through their orhids the same day they are delivered, you're likely to find a pot of slime or a crispy critter.

I actually managed to quench the orchid purchases while waiting for my wife's house to sell (Okay, we did intend to drop by a local grower on father's day, but he keeps very short hours on Sundays).

The local Lowes will mark them down to $1. Some will even be in nice pots. I've probably brought home a dozen rescues and only lost a few.

This is a problem with their small bagged catts. If I don't get there within a week or two they're crispy critters. :-( They keep their orchids right where they get blasted with cool dry air when someone enters the greenhouse. They dry out and no one waters them.

We all need a 10 step program............

The very best cattleya I have came from HD. I paid $ 49, but I would have paid $ 100 or more at an orchid greenhouse as it is a very mature plant. Blooms beautifully. I regularly buy the bagged orchids at Lowe's, but I won't touch the phalaenopsis usually. For the life of me, I can't figure out why these silly stores spend thousands of dollars on plants only to let them die. They do it with just about everything.

Well having the evil bitch kitten decide that the catts, vandas, tolumnia, isochillus, and oerstdella are damn tasty and not having a good means to seperate the kitten from the orchids put a severe damper on new purchases as well... For those of you considering adopting a stray kitten, I highly recommend deer netting to keep the feral eating machine away from the plants.

Or do as a friend of mine did. She had a screen door put on the room where her orchids were kept. This kept all her cats from damaging the plants. Screen doors are not very expensive and are easily hung but the screen must be covered with at least 19g hardware cloth.

The other option is to find a home for the cat.

Not much luck in anyone that we know taking the evil ball of white fur. We made the mistake of telling them about her personality. Getting rid of Miss Seagate is optimal as Maxtor likes sniffing orchid blooms.

And I did consider a screen door, unfortunately the orchids are in a nook with a 4.5' wide entrance.