Young billionaire from Cattleya

Instead of choosing to grow expensive orchid varieties, a young farmer in the mountainous town of Bao Loc has developed his family's economy from a colorful orchid: cattleya. And from him, many farmers are starting to expand the area of this simple orchid.

Mr. Pham Truong Son with his orchid garden

• BEAUTIFUL FLOWERS, CHEAP PRICES

Mr. Pham Truong Son, a farmer in Tan Binh 2 village, Loc Thanh commune, Bao Loc city, has just turned 35 years old, but he has 15 years of experience growing orchids. Mr. Son said that unlike many Lam Dong orchid growers who often cultivate species such as Phalaenopsis and Dancing Lady, he grows a very popular type of orchid: Cattleya. Mr. Son informed that cattleya is a type of orchid with large, colorful flowers, easy to care for and easy to bloom. Cattleya can be grown indoors or outdoors, but both require shade.

Like most orchids, cattleya requires shady growing. After an initial period of small-scale cultivation in a greenhouse, Mr. Son now has a 4-acre greenhouse for growing orchids. The cattleya house is simple with a high, airy dome and an iron trellis with thousands of orchid pots hanging from it. Mr. Son said that this orchid variety is easy to care for, and only needs adequate watering for the plant to grow and flower. To focus on production, his family specializes in growing two types: white five-petal pink-throated dendrobium and yellow dendrobium. White five-petal pink-throated dendrobium blooms in the spring, right on Tet, so it is very popular in the market. Yellow dendrobium produces bright yellow flowers with beautiful colors but is difficult to flower, growers need to shock the heat to stimulate the plant to flower. Both types of flowers are available for Tet at very reasonable prices.

“Displaying flowers during Tet is a Vietnamese tradition, my family also grows orchids to serve the needs of flower lovers. The special thing is that Cattleya orchids are quite cheap, only from 80-150 thousand VND for a pot of flowers. After enjoying the flowers, flower lovers continue to take care of them, next year the plants will bloom into beautiful flower baskets. Cheap, easy to care for, and giving flowers for many years, that is the advantage for farmers to stick with Cattleya orchids” - Mr. Son shared very sincerely.

According to Mr. Pham Truong Son, orchids of different ages have different care, fertilization, and watering regimes. With 15 years of experience, Mr. Pham Truong Son produces from seedlings to flowering pots. For seedlings, he takes them from old orchid pots with a length of 5-7 cm. Let the seedlings rest on the trellis, water them regularly, and after a month they will sprout. Exactly 45 days later, the buds are 3 cm long and are processed to be planted in the substrate. After 18-22 months of planting, from the small seedlings, a pot of mature orchids with flowers will be produced. Therefore, with Bao Loc's weather, Mr. Son often plants in April so that the plants will flower during the following Tet holiday. Each year, he sells from 10,000 to 15,000 pots of various types of orchids. Mr. Pham Truong Son sincerely shares that one sao of orchids brings in an income of about 400 million VND/year, is very easy to sell, and there are already traders who purchase the products. On the days before Tet, his family sold tens of thousands of pots of colorful blooming orchids.

• PLANT ORCHIDS AND REDUCE IMPACT ON FORESTS

What is quite special about Mr. Pham Truong Son is that he pays close attention to environmental issues. Previously, Cattleya orchid growers often used coconut fiber and pine bark as growing media because these are natural, airy, and suitable growing media for orchids. However, realizing that coconut fiber and pine bark are leafy trees in the forest, and that people who harvest coconut fiber and pine bark affect the forest, Mr. Son changed direction and found artificial growing media. He shared that growing orchids in greenhouses and managing humidity well, the garden switched to using coconut fiber as growing media. Growing coconut fiber has a comfortable supply, is cheap, and does not harm the forest. For many years, he has researched the appropriate watering level for coconut fiber growing media, helping plants to be healthy, reducing costs for farmers as well as reducing the harvesting of forest coconut fiber.

When building a greenhouse for growing orchids, Mr. Pham Truong Son always builds a water tank, installs a system to collect water from the roof and directly into the tank, and uses rainwater to water the orchids, which is both economically efficient and reduces the pressure of water flowing over and causing erosion. According to him, rainwater is also a valuable resource, it is very good for watering orchids and at the same time makes use of water resources, without over-exploiting the underground water system.

Ms. Vu Thi Yen - President of the Farmers' Association of Loc Thanh commune commented that Mr. Pham Truong Son's household is a young farmer group with good economic performance. From Mr. Son's orchid growing model, many surrounding households have learned techniques, collected seeds and cultivated Cattleya orchids for high economic efficiency. Loc Thanh commune is also building a group of orchid growing households into a cooperative, moving towards establishing a Cattleya orchid growing cooperative as a sustainable economic model for farmers. It is known that with an effective economic model, Mr. Pham Truong Son was supported by the Economic Department of Bao Loc city with 50 million VND to develop production as well as transfer technology to farmers in the area, developing Cattleya orchids on Bao Loc land.

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