Hoya campanulata, a fragile plant with a higher risk

Today is Nov.16,2010 24 days since my purchase of 11 Hoya cuttings received from you on Oct.23, 2010 It has been a total of 34 days since the cuttings were taken by yourselves on Oct.13, 2010 in preparation for shipment to me.

I am happy to report that 9 of the 11 cutting developed terrestrial roots and were transferred into soil on Nov.13,2010. They were subjected to 16 hrs. of light /400 watts of CFL. Steady room temperature of between 72-85 degrees. 50-60 % R.H. Heating mat under cuttings. Pictures attached.(as of Nov.16,2010) I appears as if I am going to be successful here! 1 of the 11 cuttings did not survive. H.campanulata never developed roots and was handled and propagated in the same manner as those that did develop roots. H.campanulata I believe was D.O.A. (dead on arrival) and did not make the trip. The remaining failed cutting, H.Kenejiana was removed from propagation on Nov.13,2010-recut-growth hormone- placed back into a plastic bag as a 'final attempt' of regenerating this cutting. I will let you know if after 34 + days this cutting catches. I planted it directly into soil and skipped the soiless mix.
Both these cuttings were noted to be smaller in stem diameter and appeared (the most) dehydrated upon arrival.
My estimated cost accounting for the one loss now averages approx. $10.00 USD per cutting. I will contact you again for future orders.

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Hoyas cuttings for the mail and those that have too thin stems

In this thread some hoya growers exchange their views about Hoyas suited for extra long travel by mail to Brazil and those that have too thin stems, some lists are given :

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/hoya/msg111537145320.html?3

When some plants have thin stems a better option of purchase may be the whole rooted plant instead of a cutting

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

Growing techniques of ''forced'' plants

Why do your hoya cuttings don't have the dark green color I am used to see from local suppliers ? ( in the west )

Good question ! the point is related to marketing strategies of by the big plant businesses, based on buyer impressions, consumer habits..

All professional people acquainted with plant growing techniques of various species would tell you : beware of forced plants under excessive periods of light , overfed, over-watered plants, especially succulents grown with hydroponic devices that fatten them; because behind the nice look, the fat and dark green appearance their longevity tends to be shorter and they may even bear a high risk of failing to adjust a change in their growing conditions. Giant suppliers of commercial orchids, cacti etc to the big distribution channels know these tricks very well. But it is difficult to be convincing about this matter in the west; experience with many plants can be a guide by allowing large scale comparisons between normally raised and forced groups of plants.


Hoya, Hoya seeds, Orchid seeds, Ferns, Fern spores and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Plants sent to California, plant price and discount

email from a dissatisfied buyer in California :
Left is a picture taken during packing
http://i447.photobucket.com/albums/qq199/areya_photos/PLANTS%20SENT/jaaleyagarden.jpg


I was not addressed the information you gave me. I was addressed the condition of the Hoyas, especially Hoya CAMPANULATA. This hoya is now a 2 sticks and is drying out from the top down to the root. This Hoya Campanulata did not even have a chance to live when it arrived in USA. Hoya Praetorii has no more leaf but trying to live on. All of the hoyas are in a 100% humility enclosed grower, as suggested by all the articles of "How to grow/start cutting and rooted plant hoyas". My suggestion to you is try to send a healthier plant if you are shipping them oversea and FORGET about the 20% discount. I DID NOT NEED THE DISCOUNT. I NEED THE HEALTHY PLANTS.It hurt my heart to look at my hoyas dying and dead. I don't think you can appreciate how it feel to have waited so long to received unhealthy plants and then they died. It broke my heart because I care.I might have made a mistake to order too many plants at one time. My friend received beautiful hoya from you when she ordered just one. She told me her other friends made the same mistake as I did and that friend was very disappointed at her low quality hoyas she purchased.
Regards,
.........
aleyagarden answer :
Yes you make a mistake but it is not what you say. Your mistake is that you read me without understanding before buying and after receiving the plants. We are disappointed to see that despite information given on aleyagarden.com on several pages : the ordering page, conditions of sales page, in forum and in this blog there is still a need for a sort of inflationary information.

You say : This Hoya Campanulata did not even have a chance to live when it arrived in USA.
Hoya Praetorii has no more leaf but trying to live on.
.. My suggestion to you is try to send a healthier plant if you are shipping them oversea ..
We had a chance to communicate before your orders and I informed you in several emails that plants sent to California must be washed more thoroughly than to other countries because of your stricter control of plant entries ( even from the USA ). Also plants sent to Europe can travel with coconut still attached.
For these 2 reasons ( plants must be very clean and without media attached ) they are sent ( healthy of course as it can be seen on the picture of your order ) to California with a higher risk of damage when arriving. Plants are sent to Europe with less problems on arrival.

I also explained to you in details that plants could be shipped in envelopes but you did not take this option.

Also praetorii, even sent in coconut, is always more at risk; regarding campanulata we don't know yet.

Finally the Hoya campanulata that we shipped to you was bigger than the average plant of this category. Usually they are mature rooted plants that weigh 105 gr for this price category. As we can see on the picture, yours had 8 leaves on 2 stems : you could not say that it was smaller than indicated in our conditions of sales. As you know we offer 3 sorts : unrooted cuttings of 45 gr, rooted plants of 105 gr like the H campanulata in picture above, and XL plants that may have a large range of weights.

" It hurt my heart to look at my hoyas dying and dead. I don't think you can appreciate how it feel to have waited so long to received unhealthy plants and then they died. It broke my heart because I care."

Like yourself we import plants and we must also face the death of plants, sometimes in high numbers for instance during flooding.

My friend received beautiful hoya from you when she ordered just one.

The person in charge of selecting the plants to be sent doesn't know if the buyer is ordering for the first time or not, so she could not select bigger plants for first time buyers, however sizes of plants vary with availability and species. For instance H praetorii is not a fast growing plant, campanulata are scarce at the moment for everyone. Anyway as I explain above you received a bigger than average plant with 2 stems and 8 leaves.

My suggestion to you is try to send a healthier plant if you are shipping them oversea and FORGET about the 20% discount. I DID NOT NEED THE DISCOUNT. I NEED THE HEALTHY PLANTS.

Although we can understand your distress we feel it unfair from you to say " I did not need the discount " AFTER plants are sent. Costs on sites like ebay are higher precisely to compensate for the claims regarding DOA plants. In your order plants totaled 160 $, we discounted by 32$ and your complaint regards 2 plants of 20$ each, but of which you report only one DOA. So your feeling is hurt for a plant of a 20 $ value .. should we understand that you would have preferred to pay 32 $ more and get a replacement ? But the problem is not that simple because before the 20% discount our prices and transport costs are already low to compensate for the DOA plants : to put it in a nutshell you saved more than the rebate of 32. You could find H. campanulata big size on ebay for 40 $ with an EMS transport cost of 35 $ ( sent bare roots and well washed to California )

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Plants in envelopes to Danmark in about 4 days

About envelopes to Danmark : http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/hoya/msg1008084117946.html?4

Hej everyone!

I'm one of those regular people who some years ago "have been bit by the Hoya bug" .You all know the treatment is "more hoya"(pretty expansive!!!)
I'm also a BIG fan of Hoya forum and I enjoy very much your "company".
Of course ,I could not resist getting a few more Hoyas because it was a lot of sunshine here last week.
So I've ordered 10 cuttings from Aleyagarden because I have been "caught" twice (with rooted hoya from another vendor;not lucky customs did open the box !!!!!) followed by a supernasty letter from the Dept of Agriculture.
My 5 envelopes( separate envelopes x 2 the 10 cuttings )of hoyas from Aleyagarden arrived in about 4 days,very well packed,larger than expected,and sooooo fast!
Just wanted everyone to know that I am experimenting with envelopes of hoya,a real good experience ! Thanks all !You are really great!

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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gel or plastic bag

In : http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/hoya/msg0801563023784.html?32
I have a suggestion . . . if ever you DO order from Aleya Garden, order 10-11 cuttings. You get a 20% discount for 10 or more, and a permit is not necessary if you order less than 13. And pay for the EMS! Oh, and tell them NOT to put a plastic bag around the entire order. That was DEATH for all in the last shipment. That stupid bag. :(

Aleyagarden's comment :
There is no need to : ".. tell them NOT to put a plastic bag around the entire order." Aleyagarden resent new plants to replace the dead ones because they mistakenly had sent with the small parcel option instead of EMS. [ Whenever mistakes occur from Aleyagarden they either refund or replace plants guaranteeing the 100% consumer's satisfaction. ] The buyer had placed her order requesting that the plants be shipped with a plastic bag and gel. The combination of the 2 could have been satisfactory for a travel in a few days, but not for a 12 days trip. ( the use of gel or plastic bag but not both is certainly safer)

Aleyagarden uses plastic bags to wrap whole plants only on request; without a note from the buyer plants are sent with a by default packing method using only paper, and moss for cuttings in parcels. Plastic bags are used to wrap the roots of plants only.

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Envelope of Hoya cuttings to the USA : 8 days.

In ://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/hoya/msg0917255014454.html?16 "... My cuttings in an envelope arrived from Aleya today - just 8 days later! They look great! Glad to have an option to NOT have to order 10 cuttings at a time and to only pay just over $2 in shipping for 3 cuttings! Granted there's more risk than the EMS, but I'll definitely try this method again!. "

Aleyagarden's comments : thank you for this posting ! Before your shipment we had sent about 100 envelopes to various countries, the risk of non arrival is 100% on the buyer side but none was reported not arrived, the average time of travel being 8 days. Transport cost is 2 $ per envelope of 2 cuttings and 2.3 $ per envelope of 3 ( a mere 0.77 $ per cuttting ! ).
Our min. of sale is still 40$ minus 20% for at least 10 cuttings. But we don't send all envelopes the same day : would the first envelope be not received, the rest of the order can still be cancelled and refunded.
example ( 12 cuttings x 4.6 ) - 20% = 44.16 Envelopes : 4 x 2.3 = 9.2. Total cost per cutting to the door : 53.36/12 = 4.44$

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Hoya lasiantha with black spots on leaves

Below is a Hoya lasiantha non rooted cutting sent in an envelope. The travel was short but the plant was stressed and took these black spots on the leaves. Who knows what these points are ?


Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Hoya elliptica with a changing color of the corona

These pictures of a Hoya elliptica show on the same plant two sorts of flowers at the same time : one sort has a
red corona while the other's corona is white. From the picture it sounds that the color changes to white with the age of the flower.

Left is Hoya elliptica clone A with its distinctive pattern on thick leaves. Below is the B clone

with thinner leaves.

Left : a new elliptica coming.. soon on sale at aleyagarden.

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Small Air Parcels to the USA : 12 days on average ?

In August 2009 we posted 4 Small Air Parcels to the same address in the USA and counted the days : 6 + 10 + 10 + 11 days; so this average is a bit under 10 days. There is nothing surprising here, an experiment on a large scale should give the figure of 12 days or under. Here is the thread :

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/hoya/msg0821430114483.html
Posted on, Aug 7, 09

I recently received a shipment of 4 boxes of hoyas from Aleya Gardens. The first arrived 6 days later, the next two arrived on day 10 and the last arrived on day 11. I chose the second fastest shipping method so there is a faster method. The plants were well rooted, the leaves were green, a lttle dehydrated, some were yellow and had fallen off, but pretty healthy considering the distance that they traveled.
They rehydrated within a couple of days with high humidity and misting. Actually the plants were larger than I expected and it cost Aleya more than I paid for shipping because the average weight was more than the listed 105 grams each. I communicated several days before ordering and each day after ordering, sometimes twice a day. Real good communication which was my deciding factor to trust the grower and take a chance of a long distance shipment. I am getting ready for my next shipment.

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Bare cuttings of Hoya shipped by aleyagarden in Small Air Parcels : 19 days in the mail, but still perfect.

The thread was posted on http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/hoya/msg0722571320118.html and is pasted under the text below. Aleyagarden is very grateful to the author for taking the time of posting and making pictures.

Here is our comment : 80 % of Small Air Parcels sent to the USA arrive within 15 days, the average being around 12 days. EMS parcels take on average 2 days less and also the deviations to this average are smaller ( less arrivals in 5 days and less arrivals in 3 weeks than the Small Air Parcel method. ) These data should be related to the difference of cost of the two methods and to the price of the plants in order to assess which method is better. ( Here at aleyagarden we import cuttings in envelopes, with a 100% rate of arrival to this day, and rarely in more than a week time.)

Hoya cuttings in a very good shape after 19 days are good luck as said in the thread but they are not the effect of a miracle : at aleyagarden we got returns of parcels after a month and we could re - grow up to 80 % of those.
Cuttings being bare or being in moss : that does not make any difference ( we have conducted many trials here ) and this is certainly the reason why - my opinion is from feedback received and experiments with imports - if we conducted a survey among our customers, certainly 50% would be positive and 50% would be negative about the use of moss.

Thread :

Just as I was beginning to fear the worst, my cuttings from Thailand (AG) arrived. Technically, they arrived over the weekend, but I was in Minneapolis, so I didn't get them until Monday. That made 19 days in a box, which I know isn't breaking any records around here, but it did freak me out!

FYI: I got psyched out by the text on their website saying small packages sometimes arrive faster via the "slow" method and ignored all advice posted here to use the fast method and request sphagnum baggies. I didn't make any special packing requests. Next time I'd go with the faster method though - I think I just lucked out this time

This is how they looked when they arrived. They are soaking in some sort of water-vodka-sugar-epsom salt-superthrive cocktail I was trying out.

Here they are after 26 hours. (I didn't think they needed that long, but I was either sleeping or working the rest of the time)

blasternaezii, cumingiana, caudata, ariadna, erythrostemma (pink)

Note: They sent 3 stems of the erythrostemma :)


archboldiana (pink), nicholsoniae, lobbii 2, imperialis (red), waymaniae (long leaf)

There were a few peduncles in this batch. :) I think they look pretty good for 19 days. There are a couple I'm worried about but I'm optimistic. ..

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Hoya elliptica clone B gives seeds at aleyagarden

The fact is so rare that it is worth being mentioned.

Aleyagarden grows thousands of hoya whithout a chance to see pod seeds. But today a ripe pod of Hoya elliptica clone B has split and shows the seeds. As the split occured a few hours ago they are of a nice green Pistachio inside which indicates their freshness.

Some threads in plant forums give useful information on planting Hoya seeds, for instance :

forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/hoya/msg08180840498.html

Hoya elliptica clone B seeds a few hours after the pod has opened.


Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Hoya XL size sent by aleyagarden

Here are 4 hoyas of XL size to be shipped by Aleyagarden. Hoya hypolasia, Hoya kenejiana variegata, Hoya heuschkeliana and Hoya sp. UT001

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Hoya cuttings arrive fast in envelopes

We are so happy at Aleyagarden in Thailand
with two cuttings acquired from France by mail : these bare cuttings travelled 8
days in an envelope with a light plastic bubbled sheet, as we can see on the
picture.


It seems that on average envelopes of cuttings arrive faster than parcels !!


They were ( and are still ) in a perfect shape on arrival but who knows in what condition they would be if there had not been this plastic '' bag'' inside the postal envelope ? About a quarter section of the thinner one ( H. microstemma ) had already started to dry out - this species has a thinner stem than other Hoyas - .


So even though plastic covers induce a higher risk of yellowing leaves, here we still recommend their use by our senders : despite our natural humidity in Thailand during most part of the travel time - I guess after only 48 hours the parcels are already in Bangkok, a stem that has, unluckily, defoliated because of heat can still restart with enough constant humidity and temperature of the air - but a dehydrated cutting is definitely harder to regrow.

Some people have shared their experiences with Hoya microstemma on this thread of gardenweb.com :
http://forums.gardenweb.com/load/hoya/msg0723360223071.html

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Hoya cv " Ruthie" ?

I have been told and read several names, ( Hoya " Ruthie" is the most recurrent
one ) for this Hoya plant with wonderful big yellow - orange flowers and thick
leaves. It seems easy to identify but any other name you would suggest is welcome ! It has so nice large flowers ! It will be soon for sale in aleyagarden.com
shop !

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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Hoya oblongata, Hoya palawanica, Hoya myrmecopa, Hoya merrillii : beautiful bare cuttings coming in an envelope with bubbled plastic sheet

A high speed import is to report today, by envelope in the mail ! It took less than 3 days from France to Bangkok in Thailand, for these 4 Hoya plant cuttings to reach Aleyagarden
letter box! Perfect shape again in a closed plastic wrap ! : Hoya oblongata, Hoya palawanica, Hoya myrmecopa, Hoya merrillii.

Beautiful bare cuttings coming in an envelope with bubbled plastic sheet.

A close up of the inside of the envelope : a plastic wrap with air filled bubbles to contain Hoya bare cuttings.

Hoya, Hoya seeds, Orchid seeds, Ferns, Fern spores and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

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More hoyas with names to check

7156 Hoya salweenica ?

7154

7151 Hoya sp VL9 ?

7149 Hoya polystachya ?

7148

7147

7146

7145

7141

7140

7138 Hoya lobbii ?

7137

7136

7239

7236

7235

7233

7232

7231

7229

7228

7224

7223

7222

7220

7219 Hoya oreogena

7217

7216

7215

7214

7212

7211

7210

7209

7208

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

Find all Aleyagarden posts on http://aleyagarden-blog.blogspot.com.