The orchids in Mr. Do Ba Tam's orchid farm are propagated and developed in batches all year round.
Surrounding his family’s spacious two-story house are three gardens for breeding and growing about 150 species of orchids, from common to rare and mutated species. Each garden is a large greenhouse with a roof, arranged on two floors. Although the sun is blazing outside, these greenhouses are cool thanks to a temperature control system and dozens of misting nozzles that maintain stable humidity all year round.
Visiting the production areas, Mr. Tam introduced dozens of orchid varieties with new names. From purebred varieties such as slipper orchids, phi dieps, cymbidium orchids, and kim tuyen orchids to many rare and mutated varieties such as Hue sword orchids, Phu Tho white orchids, Phu Tho red orchids, and even rare species with blue and red petals... The characteristic of this garden is to sell cuttings in large quantities, but rarely raise them to flower. After 15 years of developing the orchid growing profession, exchanging on forums and national orchid associations, it has created a reputation, each time it exports a few trucks of goods. Since then, other gardeners often continue to raise them to flower to sell on Tet holidays or to the small market all year round. Based on orders from gardeners nationwide, each year this ornamental garden sells about 30,000 orchid seedlings of all kinds and about 100,000 pots of mature orchids to the market.
Thanks to mastering the breeding technology, each shelf here grows an orchid variety with thousands of substrates of uniform sizes. For example, the area for growing and developing the orchid with 2,000 pots, currently costs an average of 250,000 VND per pot, bringing in a value of about 500 million VND. Mr. Tam also introduced rare mutant varieties purchased from previous years, now propagated into hundreds of pots.
Discussing the story of mutant orchids that have passed their "feverish" price point, and whether growing orchids is still effective, Mr. Tam affirmed that this is still a super profitable crop. "We know that the era of growing mutant orchids has gone into decline, but the orchid growing movement is still developing. Not to mention the gardeners who still take seeds and grow large quantities to sell Tet flowers. For example, a pot of mutant Hue orchids , which used to cost hundreds of millions of VND, now only costs 4 - 5 million VND/pot, but self-propagating and selling still brings in big profits. With mass orchid varieties, each cutting is only sold for 3 to 5 thousand VND, each time tens of thousands of seedlings are sold, there is also an income of hundreds of millions of VND" - Mr. Do Ba Tam shared.
Not every farmer can successfully develop a model of creating embryos, raising and developing orchids in a high-tech way like Mr. Do Ba Tam. Because in the past, he used to work as a technical worker for orchid gardens in the suburbs of Hanoi . After many years of accumulating experience, he pooled his capital to develop a number of small-scale gardens in foreign lands. "More than 15 years ago, in Hanoi, we had to rent land for up to 2 million VND/sao/year (360m2), which was too expensive. Meanwhile, in my hometown, the gardens were empty, so I had the idea of returning home to start a business," said Mr. Tam.
Since 2013, Mr. Tam and his wife have started to renovate the mixed garden, invest in planting and breeding areas, and propagate orchids using high technology. During the first 2 years, they had to work at a moderate pace and study more experience, then he dared to invest on a large scale. This is a crop that requires very high cultivation techniques, so for the past 15 years, he has always maintained the hiring of 2 experts, along with 3 family workers to be able to operate the nursery as well as take care of the orchids. Large and small orchid batches are continuously incubated and intercropped, so the annual nursery export coefficient here is quite high.
As soon as one batch of orchids is exported, another batch grows up to replace it, keeping the production areas always green. According to Mr. Tam, all stages of production here are clean, the orchids do not need pesticides, and even the irrigation water is pure well water filtered through sand before being sprayed with mist. In addition to contributing to the clean living environment in residential areas, the orchid farm has not discharged anything. Even sawdust and rotten wood used as growing medium for orchids, when discharged, are composted into organic compost to grow ornamental plants in the garden.
In addition to the orchid gardens, Mr. Tam used a plot of land far from his house to develop an ornamental garden of more than 1,000 square meters. Many types of flowers such as magnolia, lily, peony, money tree, and chrysanthemum are grown and developed here. At the time we were there, 250 peony trees 3 to 5 years old had bloomed bright red flowers, creating canopies as tall as adults, waiting to be sold. According to the garden owner, the flower varieties here are also mainly sold wholesale to ornamental plant shops in Thanh Hoa City and other provinces. For example, a peony tree many years old here is only sold for 1.5 million VND in mass production, but in Thanh Hoa City it is being sold retail for about 3 million VND.
With a total area of 2,500m2 specializing in growing orchid species, not counting the number of floors on each floor, each year the production area sells about 2 billion VND of orchid plants, about 120 million VND of orchid cuttings, not including some perennial bushes and mutated orchid pots sold online. To reduce production costs, his family also opened a workshop to produce orchid industry materials such as substrates, hangers, orchid baskets, both for use and for online trading with other garden owners nationwide. Recently, his family also bought more machinery and hired more workers to open a plastic flower production facility right in their yard. According to Mr. Tam's accounting, the total revenue from production activities in recent years has reached about 5 billion VND/year, with a profit of about 1 billion VND.
Article and photos: Linh Truong
Source: https://baothanhhoa.vn/vuon-treo-sinh-thai-sieu-loi-nhuan-250506.htm
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