Orchid Farming?

[hiorchids]

Aloha! This is my first post to Punaweb - been reading for awhile and have found a lot of good information. My partner and I are considering a move to Puna in the next couple years and are interested in orchid farming, or possibly vanilla farming. I've been doing a lot of research on the web, but there is not much in the way of "industry information" related to these two topics (or at least, specific to Hawaii). Can anyone provide any direction to someone looking to learn more about the business of orchids on the Big Island? Seems like there are a number of growers, but I'm wondering if it's possile to actually making a living doing this, especially given the increase in imports from Asia, which seem to be putting pressure on Hawaiian farms. Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated. Mahalo! []

[hiorchids]

Carey - wow...thanks for all the info. I'll spend some time going through the links. I have found a guy north of Hilo on the Hamakua Coast doing vanilla farming, which sounds interesting as well. It's an incredibly labor-intense crop (the flowers only open for 1 day nd must be hand-pollinated), but also maintains a high price for the beans produced. Again, thanks for the info - i'll check out the links! Mahalo.

[Kapohocat]

Is that guy out there awesome with his vanilla orchids????

[Daniel]

Here is a website of a small orchid farm right here in HPP. Mr. Lowe is a good friend of mine and I reccommend asking him for any help you might need, or if you want to buy flowers, he has some very nice ones.


http://www.lowesorchids.com/

Daniel R Diamond