Agriculture Business Week

Not many people may realize it but the orchid business is also creating a lot of jobs, not only for farm workers but also for traders and other entrepreneurs.

Just take the case of Edwin Veneracion and his wife Gina of San Rafael, Bulacan. When they put up their Golden Blooms nursery in 1998, they started with just three helpers and 3,000 dendrobium seedlings.

Twelve years later, they now have 50 workers who are full-time employees.

Their stocks have increased to more than 600,000 dendrobiums of various sizes, and a lesser number of vandas, cattleyas, and oncidiums.

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Two Bicolano couples who are senior citizens are enjoying gardening and making some income profit from it.

Dr. Santos Balderas and his wife, Dr. Paz Balderas, both retired professors of the Camarines Sur State Agricultural College in Pili, have a collection of the latest ornamentals, both foliage and flowering, as well as some decorative fruit trees. With the help of a lady agriculturist, Mia Caceres, the nursery and plant store located a few kilometers from where they live is kept spic and span. Propagation is continuous and so is the selling.

On the other hand, Marcelo Escaro and wife Patria of Naga City, owners of a big mango farm in Calabanga, are also busy tending their spacious garden in Naga where they grow a lot of orchids and other ornamentals. The vanda orchids for cut flowers are particularly floriferous, thanks to regular spraying with foliar fertilizer.

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Waling-waling is one of the finest orchid species endemic to the Philippines, desired by orchid growers and breeders alike for its showy and attractive flowers and ability to impart its vigor and floral characteristics to its progeny,” wrote Dr. Helen Valmayor in her book, Orchidiana Philippiniana.

“The flowers are flat, to eight centimeters across; the sepals and petals are obviate, bluish pink, with buff-yellow stain, and dull-crimson reticulations on the lateral sepals; the lip is small and concave, purple-red at base, strongly recurved and brownish purple at apex; with three prominent keels.”

That is how the book, A Pictorial Cyclopedia of Philippine Ornamental Plants, described the exotic waling-waling, known in the science world before as Vanda sanderiana.

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Davao has carved its own comfortable niche in the world of flowers and has earned the distinction as the orchid capital of the Philippines.

Davao is known for its fine beaches, exotic fruits and endangered wildlife species. At the mere mention of the city, the vision of exquisite and varied orchids would immediately come into people’s minds from across the country and around the world.

In fact, Davao has carved its own comfortable niche in the world of flowers and has earned the distinction as the orchid capital of the Philippines. Orchids in the Philippines come in an amazing array of shapes, sizes and colors. Most grow only in old-growth forest, often on branches of huge trees dozens of meters above the forest floor.

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The secret to healthier ornamentals, as one family attests, is using the right fertilizer.

Finding the right fertilizer has always been a major problem of ornamental plant growers. They always have specific considerations in choosing the right fertilizer that would give them bountiful, healthy and attractive crops.

Dr. Perlito Ibarra, associate professor at the University of the Philippines Los Banos, and his wife Mrs. Angelita Ibarra, proprietors of Gintong Talulot found the perfect solution for the fertilizer needs of their ornamental plants especially orchids. Thanks to one such fertilizer Osmocote Controlled Release Fertilizer (CRF)professional growers like the Ibarras are assured of healthy crops year round.

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