Caring for Orchids and Tropicals
Orchids, tropical flowers and tropical foliages are unique in the floral world. As such they require different care and treatment to temperate climate flowers to gain the most life from them.
What We Do
The Orchids which you purchase from us are imported. Contrary to what many florists and growers say virtually all Orchids sold in Australia as cut flowers are imported from SE Asia. It is mainly to do with climate and the length of the growing season. Also the high number of plants required of each variety to be comercially viable makes labour costs a significant impost. Its the reason most people refer to them as Singapore Orchids. Post harvest treatment and transit times both effect shelf life. At Tropical Blooms our Orchids are sourced almost exclusively from Singapore growers who have been certified to the high AQIS certification standards. This means they have been handled to the highest standards and procedures. All of our Orchids are shipped in water filled plastic vials for maximum freshness.
Our Orchids are received by air on Tuesday mornings and are repacked and shipped the same day to our customers for delivery Australia wide on Wednesday / Thursday. We guarantee never to supply any flower that is more than 24 hours old from having been received or picked at our farm in Cairns.
When someone tells you their Orchids are fresh every day you should understand that they do not arrive into Australia each day of the week. They must have been stored by the distributor somewhere.
All of our Heliconia, Ginger, Costos, Cordyline and Lucky Bamboo are grown on our farm in Cairns. Unlike normal flowers tropicals drink almost no water through the stems once picked. To gain the maximum life they must be fully saturated before picking. We have many hundreds of metres of computerised fully automatic irrigation which waters our plants right through the night to maintain maximum turgidity before picking. As soon as they are picked they are placed in our special "roll on roll off" water troughs on trailers and taken to be processed. We dip all of our flowers in a special anti transpirant to reduce any water loss. Our tropicals are shipped in special plastic lined wet pack box's to retain maximum moisture in transit.
Tropicals from our farm are picked for arrival on Mondays and Wednesday/Thursday. We guarantee no flowers shipped by us will be more than 24 hours old from picking or arriving at our farm.
What You Do
When you receive your flowers you should carfully unpack them and remove all plastic sleeves. Cut off any water vials used and recut other stems. Ideally you should totally submerge the entire stem and flower underwater for 15 minutes to an hour to allow them to rehydrate fully then arrange them in a suitable vase for display. They should be misted regularly and the water changed every few days.
Tropical Flowers like to be wet and are cold sensitive. They should not be exposed to temperatures below 8C. Remove any curled leaves and trim brown tips of flowers if they occur. Both are symtoms of heat or moisture stress. Browning at the base of the flower head is a symtom of cold damage.
Orchids are more cold tolerant than tropicals. Retrim the stems every few days and if the flowers start to droop resoak them in tepid water for an hour to revitalise.
Like all flowers tropicals and Orchids do not like being exposed to cold draughts, fans, heaters, air conditioning, direct sunlight or hot down lights.
Heliconias have small florets in the bracs which are often refered to as "day flowers" and it is common for a few of these to fall through the life of the flower, particularly within the first few days of picking. It is a good indicator of freshness and is an entirely normal aspect of Heliconias.