5 Generations Built This Inredible Plant Business (And It's More Than Just Orchids)

Hello there my name is Quintin and welcome to EFG Orchids. We're gonna take a look at our nursery which was started back in 1939. Wow you said it's fifth generation right? I'm actually the fifth generation. Wow. So we've been growing orchids for a very long time and over the last ten years or so we've been getting into all sorts of different tropical varieties and that's been my world. I am obsessed with aeroids with tropical plants and I'm just trying to learn everything I can and my philosophy is you're never done learning about plants. Even the most world-renowned experts they're still gonna be learning new things. That's true. As well and I have much to learn. So you're the one that made these? I am. Wow. So this is our hybrid Anthurium Titan Fingers. The pollen parent was Podata radiatum and the seed parent was Foster Morondi and we'll definitely have to take a look at our mother Foster Morondi around the corner as well. Yeah. She's definitely one of my favorite plants if not my favorite plant. So I love our Foster Morondi. But these are growing very well so far. They tolerate a wide range of temperatures. 115 degrees in our back house for a few hours each day and I try to cool them off with some cold water as much as I can. But I had a couple planted in my woods and they actually survived 18 degrees. Wow. Now I covered it for the two days where we got down to 18 degrees. But when we got down to around 26 degrees or so they didn't shed any leaves or have any trouble. Which is very interesting. That's really good to know actually. And they get that cold hardiness from Foster Morondi. I have planted two of our large Foster Morondi out there and did not even cover them. During our freezes they took 18 degrees. They shed all their leaves and they're coming back with multiple new growths and looking very happy. Wow. How old are these? They are a little bit older than Crystal Colossus. So about three years. If not a little bit older than three years at this point. And the size definitely varies a lot on them and it's mostly because we just haven't kept up with repotting them. And so you can almost bonsai them if you keep them in a smaller pot. We've had some of our ten inch size where the roots actually climb up about eight inches out of the pot. So I have to sit there and hold the hose over them for quite a while to really keep up with their needs. But it's been interesting. That is really neat. These things are gonna be huge. They're already huge. I'm excited to see how big they get for sure. I definitely want to test the cold hardiness more too. That's my main goal is to create large beautiful landscape Anthurium. We'll get there eventually. This is our Anthurium clavigerum. Wow. Which produced a really nice fruit with all of these babies. So we have around 1,400 seedlings or so of Anthurium clavigerum now. And they do grow very fast. So we will have some good deals on our Anthurium clavigerum. Are you gonna have those at the show? We will. Awesome. Yeah. We'll probably have some totems by then. We'll see. Yeah. And this is our mother plant Anthurium Thostomyrondi. Which I can climb in here and kind of hold up the leaves so we can see inside there a little bit. But you can see just how large the trunk is on there. Wow. And this plant I would estimate is around 16-17 years old at this point. Insane. And here's one of the leaves so we can kind of take a closer look as well. I accidentally broke it by accident. It does happen from time to time. But they do not mind at all. So if I break a leaf or two off, as long as it's not the new leaf, they grow very quickly. And I found that they really love calcium and magnesium fertilizer. I'll see. I just gave a whole bunch to this one. So I'm thrilled to have a new leaf in no time. That's crazy. You could use it as an umbrella. You really can. And they last a very long time too. It'd be the perfect umbrella. And these seedlings are actually only six years old. Really? And we have little baby Phosphomorondi that are in a three-inch pot size right now. So it's amazing to look at and think in six years it's gonna be like this. Yeah. It really is amazing. It almost feels like cheating to a point when you when you grow them. They just grow so fast. It's like but it's like that the question is can you keep up with them? They require a lot of water, a lot of fertilizer, and we'll definitely have some baby Phosphomorondi at the Expo. And we actually have this cross back with Anthurium clarinervum. And I have three little seedlings growing and they're starting to show some color. So we're open to have a giant real colorful clarinervum like plant that's cold hardy. So fingers crossed. So clarinervum, Phosphomorondi. So it's Titanervium cross back with clarinervum. Okay. So it'll have that Phosphomorondi genes and the clarinervum as well. But we're open to bring out more of the clarinervum coloration. So fingers crossed. I really like the colors of those. It has like a blue black type sheen to it. They really they show a lot of the color in the new leaves too. Oh wow. But certain seedlings definitely have more pronounced color than others. We have some that almost already look like clarinervum a little bit. And so we're open to give them that next extra stuff by crossing it back with the clarinervum again. And we're crossing them with a few other colorful varieties as well. But I'll reveal more as we see germination as well. We could show off the variegated Phalaenopsis. I'd say that's one of my favorite that we have right now. And they're just about to be done blooming but they have beautiful purple flowers as well. Kind of a purple pink. You have quite a few of them over here. And we're actually working on propagating these as well. So real soon I'm gonna go around and put Kikia paste on each one of the flower spikes. And we're gonna try to get some little variegated plantlets going. And so far that seems to be successful. I've done a few in our propagation area and they come out variegated just like the main plant which is nice. That's fun. With any luck we'll have variegated Phalaenopsis around forever. That's definitely my goal. They're beautiful plants. Just very stable too. I haven't seen one grow a green leaf yet. Always nice to see. I wish that were true with all the philodendrons that are variegated as well. But unfortunately almost everyone I've ever worked with they revert. So and you can combat that by doing a lot of propagation. Yeah. That's my motto with variegated philodendron. Cut cut cut. They grow really fast here though. In comparison to the house. They definitely do. Brighter light definitely helps as well. And so I try to grow them as bright as I can. But even with that it seems to be somewhat genetic too. And so I think a lot of times there's just nothing you can do about it. That makes sense. What do you got behind you? Here we have a lady slipper orchid. Passio petalo. Definitely beautiful. Yeah. The foliage is actually really pretty though on that. They really are. And that's a Maudii variety. And they definitely have one of the most colorful foliage pattern. I think that could get me into orchids. The the foliage. Yeah. Well it's nice because I like to have something to look at all year. And so once an orchid's done flowering not all orchids are gonna rebloom again right away. Exactly. Like a Passio petalum usually you're just gonna see a bloom once a year. So it's nice to be able to enjoy that interesting foliage as well. That's so true. There are some orchids like this one behind you here though. Dendrobium actually will bloom all year. So this one here always has flowers on it. The bigger they get it's just a constant thing. After every new growth they're producing a new set of flowers. And this one is actually from my great-uncle. And it's around 16 years old or so I'd say. It's not a little older. It could even be upwards of 20 something years old. That's huge. The actual variety I'm not quite sure of. He didn't have a label with it. Those are how I always inherit plants. You're like they don't keep the tags. It's just a plant we inherit. Love to death. Something I really want to experiment with more and to have out there. Orchids growing on moss poles and coconut poles. Yeah. You don't really see it too often. But this Dendrobium has almost made it up to this moss pole up here. And so I want to see if it'll climb up it. And I think it's just gonna follow where the light is and just keep going along with this Philodendron Crassanervum here. So we'll see. They definitely love to climb though. What do you have in your hands? This is a variegated vanilla. And this particular variety is actually called Super Swirl. And eventually they'll produce the vanilla bean that is used to make the vanilla extract. It's very nice. And we do have them flower occasionally in the greenhouse. Wow. They have to get a lot bigger than this. They have to get to about the thickness of my thumb. Thickness of the thumb. Yep. To be able to flower. I didn't know that. With most varieties. There are some varieties where they'll flower a little smaller. We've got a different variety here too. Yeah that's the kind of like the Aurea variegation. Wow. Like inner and outer and. Definitely a beautiful plant. Thank you, thank you. And they prefer having something to climb on. But as long as you missed all those aerial roots, they'll stay happy and continue to kind of climb around wherever you have them. We'll actually have them growing up our metal posts. I don't know if you see this one over here. But they'll just kind of take off sometimes and fly right up there. We have them in a few different areas and. That's crazy. It's interesting how they'll find a way. We actually have them grow all the way up to the peak of our greenhouse about 20 feet up. And it still was alive up there even though it's probably like 130 degrees up near the peak. It didn't look the happiest you know. And we went up there and rescued it and pulled it down. But I don't know how it got up there. It's like you turn your back. It's growing you know maybe like four or five feet off the ground. And like all of a sudden they're just. It's like it happens overnight it seems like. I don't know. I have a what I thought was a small one in this little pot. Like a little small cutting. And it wrapped around this pole. And I thought it just stopped growing. But it wrapped around the back side where I couldn't see up into the next pot. Next thing I know I'm like what is up there? Why is that lipstick plant variegating on the top shelf? And it had taken over my lipstick plant. I'll send you a picture. It's just like what are you doing? How'd you get up there? So yes I can relate. Yeah it's it's very weird. And it sometimes it's just certain plants like they just find their perfect little microclimate and they just want to just thrive. And they just pass up all the other plants even if it's the tissue culture. Yeah. The same plant nearby. If they have a spot where they're really happy. I think that's 99% of it is finding the right environment for our plants to grow in. Yeah. I just noticed you had several growing up little trellises or. This does happen from time to time too. We'll have to go through and redo this one. But they will actually dry out occasionally. And I try to go through and you know give them all a nice little spritzing of water as much as I can. But sometimes that's just not enough. And we have our fan blowing real close by. So I've been trying to move them back a little ways. So really easy to propagate. All you really have to do is just wrap them around inside of a pot and tuck all the aerial roots and some moss. You can even put a little bit of the stem into the moss as well. But I find when they're on the surface it's a lot less likely they rot. We have one with a picture of the flowers too. Looks almost like a Cattleya orchid or a dendrobium orchid. They're real similar. Definitely one of my favorite orchids as well. Vanillas are just a lot of fun to grow. And something I haven't done yet that I'm really excited to do is create topiaries with them. I think they have a potential to be a beautiful topiary. I think you're right. The next one we're gonna set up is gonna be a big crocodile. And that used to be a Hoya callistophyla crocodyla. We had that on display up front. Eventually it just got so overgrown that we had to propagate the crocodyla, unfortunately. So it's gonna be a vanilla crocodile now. That leaf back there looks a little longer than the other ones. It just seems to produce, yeah, a little bit longer leaves. As far as I know that should be a plantifolia as well. Unless somehow we got had one sneak in. And we do have different contributors to the greenhouse and friends that'll bring in cuttings and stuff. So it's possible this could be something else. I'm pretty sure it's plantifolia. We had a lot of mature cuttings that we did off of our large plant up front. We actually produced some vanilla beans on it as well. These were all produced from cuttings. And it'd be interesting to see how long it takes them to flower because they're already pretty large. Yeah. I'm hoping we'll actually see them flower in these hanging baskets. That'll be really cool. Yeah, they're pretty thick. Here's one of our larger cuttings. Oh wow. They're starting to grow into each other so we're gonna have to do some vanilla wrangling pretty soon. But this is just about big enough to flower. Yeah. Ideally that, you know, you want them to be a little bit bigger. But I have seen them flower at this size. That is beautiful. How heavy do you think that whole plant is? Maybe like 10 pounds. Oh, that's not that bad. Not too heavy. I try not to give them so much water. A lot of people will say you have to water and water your bolifilum phalaenopsis. And a lot of bolifilums do just want to always be super moist. But I've experimented with these and I've had them in real dry areas of the greenhouse. And actually sit dry for weeks. And they didn't have a huge amount of trouble from it. You know, I tried to kind of rehydrate them and moisten them again afterwards. But they seem to be fairly drought tolerant. And so I like to kind of tease them on the watering a little. Just to get them moist. Let them just start to go dry and then I water them again. And they seem to really prefer that. And since I started taking care of them that way, we're seeing our first flower. So it might have something to do with it in the watering possibly. They're so pretty. And I have not smelled this yet. So I'm gonna have to take a whiff. It's actually not that horrible. I would say a stapelia has a stronger smell. Not too bad. I've always been worried about how horrible they smell. But it's not as bad. Maybe when it opens up a little more it might clear out the whole greenhouse. Possibly. We'll see it. It is, I think, still opening. Yeah. How old is this one? Um, I would say about 10 years old. Wow. This one here is about 14 years old. Look how big the bulbs are. Is this one the same species as that one? Yep. Bobophyllum phalaenopsis. Phalaenopsis. And got some nice little new growths coming along. I do want to set this up with a little bit larger area to grow though. It's been on this for as long as I can remember. Probably at least like eight or nine years. Wow. So it's nice to have some some fresh wood and some some new moss for them as well. Ideally you want to give orchids fresh potting media once a year in the spring if you can. At least every two years minimum. But when they're mounted you can get away with a lot longer because it's not really holding as much bacteria and fungus. So you can treat them really easy. Everything's out in the open. So I can I can treat them and keep it healthy that way. There's nowhere for the bad things to hide that you don't want to be in the plants. That makes sense. And you said you're bringing some of these to the Tropical Plant Expo? We are. They're actually right up here. We have little baby Bobophyllum phalaenopsis. So they like to about double in size each year. Wow. As long as you're fertilizing regularly and they're bright enough. They're pretty fast growing. That's so cool. I think one of the major things is humidity though. They like high humidity. So if an anthurium is doing good I wouldn't say the Bobophyllum is gonna be right at home next to that anthurium. Interesting. Okay. Yeah it's like a purpley. That is the same one yeah. You're right. Yeah and they um the pinker leaves too can be a sign of stress. I can tell this one's been getting too much water. And so I have the rest of our main crop of the Bobophyllum phalaenopsis a little ways away from the mist. So I'm mostly hand watering them with the hose. And so this one's even getting dripped on a little bit too much over there. So yeah a lot of times when you see that color it's it's usually not necessarily a good thing. That's an older one too though so we're gonna have to repot it real soon as well. So that is a dendrobium. There's a little flower hiding down here as well. And it's also got a little plant baby going right there. And a lot of the dendrobiums tend to not look all so amazing. This particular plant is not the healthiest in the world either. And definitely wants a little bit more fertilizer. A little bit more individualized care. And do dendrobiums grow down like that? They're like hanging? A lot of them will yeah. In nature most of the orchids you're gonna see are actually gonna hang off of the trees. So you'll see Vandas growing kind of sideways and hanging down. But they're always gonna try to find the light. Now we're kind of going through and redoing our whole area. I'm installing some new mist systems and have a little more accuracy in our watering. And we have a lot of areas where things are getting a little too dry, a little too wet. And so we're kind of reconsolidating and fine-tuning everything. Nice. Yeah we actually inherited a collection of over 200 varieties. Wow. Actually it was more like 270 or so. I don't have an exact count because it was just so many that we kind of jumped right into it. Started propagating them all. So we're gonna be bringing out new varieties of Hoyas for probably the next two years or so. Wow. But definitely some interesting varieties. One of my favorites that we have is actually Crassio pedulata splath. And has a really stable variegation. Seems to be a great grower so far. Uh-huh. So we're really excited about that variety. Do you have it in here? Yeah it's actually right around the corner here. Oh that is actually really pretty. Thank you. Polyneura is one of the ones that I've had trouble with. I think the biggest problem we have is just the heat in here. There's certain Hoyas that just do not like how hot it gets in the greenhouse. And I try to go through and let the leaves down to cool them off as much as I can. But they just dry out so fast. It's amazing. So we're really excited about all of our new Hoyas and we'll be bringing in a really really nice selection. Awesome. And this is our other select seedling of Philodendron red emerald by Varicosum. Which we named Pele Wa'o. Which actually stands for like a fiery forest or a volcano forest in Hawaiian. Is that one easier to grow than the one? Very easy. It's actually a real similar to red emerald. But it does have some of the humidity requirements of Varicosum. So you can definitely do them indoors if you have a humidifier if you miss them occasionally. And they don't have to have a moist surface as much as Varicosum. So they can kind of grow on their own and still be happy. But if they don't have support their leaves are gonna start getting smaller as well. Definitely a beautiful plant. Most of their color is on the bottom sides of the leaves. And the emergent leaves really have a nice venation to them as well. And our largest Pele Wa'o is actually growing on our living wall back here. Oh this is Kapuka emerald the other form. That came off that same fruit as well as the Pele Wa'o. Kapuka emerald. And it has this interesting green variegation in the backs of the leaves. See that. And this is our most mature specimen of Pele Wa'o. Really shows the most bright coloration. And you can see the color goes all the way down quite a ways. So you see like with Philodendron splendid it usually fades with our plants after like three or four leaves. But this holds the color quite quite some time. And that's mainly if you have a moist surface and you're really taking care of those aerial roots. They'll really hold that color for you. So that's the trick. It is. And I would say with most Philodendron that have that interesting color the more you can really take care of those aerial roots and fertilize and provide them with the surface and something to root into. Really helps. That's one of our largest Thai Constellation cuttings. And we actually found the original mother plant of that Thai Constellation growing in a palm tree. Almost like it was a weed about 27 years ago. My uncle found it and pulled it out and we potted it. And so that predates all the tissue culture Thai Constellations out there. And I actually have a big fruit on one of ours that we're growing. And I crossed it with Jose Buono. The Philodendron. So more than likely it's gonna end up being Thai Constellation babies. But my fingers are crossed. Like maybe I'll have that Monsterodendron. We'll see. They say it's impossible but I like to try to test that. It's always my goal. That's always fun to just experiment. You never know what's gonna happen. Doesn't really take too much extra time. Why not give it a try. Exactly. And this is the mother plant of our new hybrid Philodendron Elven Magic as well. That's the mother plant? Majesty by Jose Buono. Wow. That's our newest hybrid along with Philodendron Gigantium by Bilitae. Well our two newest Philodendron. And Majesty is definitely one of my favorite Philodendron. And I have been trying to create a hybrid with this plant for about five years. After like 90 pollination attempts I finally got Elven Magic. And so my next cross that I want to make is Varicosum in Majesty. I've tried that many many times. Still no success. Have to keep trying. Yeah you finally figured it out. So you're doing something right. Very forgiving though. And the nice thing is that you don't have to worry about having a moss pole or anything. I'll come through and I just I water this maybe twice a week. I'll just go ahead and soak it down real good with my hose. Whenever I fertilize I try to stand there for a couple minutes and really give it a nice soaking as well. Not too high maintenance. She's beautiful. Yeah really is. Really are. What is this in this pot? This one here? This is another hybrid that I made. It's called Philodendron Billy Buono. And it's a cross between Philodendron Jose Buono and Philodendron Bilitae. And been a great grower overall. I would say the Elven Magic as a crop of seedlings is way outperforming Billy Buono so far. Almost every single one is growing vigorously. Looking nice. With Billy Buono we did have a handful of seedlings that weren't the best growing as well. And so we've done all of our selections and we're now down to all the plants that we're gonna keep around to propagate as the Billy Buono of the future. And the Billy Buono we're always gonna see you know moving forward. Nice. Yeah. Before we wrap this up do you have any tips for people trying to do Philodendron hybridization? Yeah. One of the main things is not to give up. To be persistent. Because you can do everything right and it still might not work out. So sometimes you may have to try 30 or 40 times to get there. The main part is fresh fresh pollen. Yeah. I like to use it within a week of collecting it. And you want to store it in a fridge right away after you collect it. I like to mix it up with the slurry. So I'll mix a little bit of water in with the pollen. And you want to really mix it well so you don't have any little chunks or anything like that. And one of the most important factors I've noticed though is thermogenesis. It's the chemical heating of an inflorescence. Uh-huh. And so if you can catch the inflorescence going through that thermogenesis when you fill the spadex it'll be at the top of the inflorescence. I don't have one here to demonstrate. But you want to grab that spadex and if it feels like it's around like you know 95 to 100 degrees especially if it's cooler out. Because ideally you're gonna have the best success in cooler temperatures. So I've always had the best luck when the temperatures are like in low 70s to kind of mid to high 60s. And you'll really be able to tell when it's going through that thermogenesis during that time of year as well. Yes you will. When you can catch them going through that you're gonna have much more success. Okay thank you so much. Yeah no problem. Well what was supposed to be a quick one-hour pit stop on our drive back to Atlanta after the reptile and exotic plant mega show somehow turned into a three-hour shopping trip and mini tour. And honestly we barely scratched the surface on everything Quintin, his family, and the team at EFG Orchids are working on. Beyond their incredible orchids they're breeding cold hardy anthurium, creating never-before-seen philodendron hybrids, growing hoyas, cacti, carnivorous plants, and so much more. Everywhere you look there's another project happening. But what really stood out to me is that EFG Orchids isn't just a nursery. It's an experience. This fifth-generation family business is built around growing plants, creating new hybrids, and sharing their knowledge with others. They offer educational classes, Quintin shares amazing content on YouTube, and they're even building a giant pyramid greenhouse that will become another incredible part of the property. Between the jungle outpost, the nature trail, the greenhouses, and everything else there is to explore, it's one of those places where you can easily lose track of time just like I did. So if you're ever in this part of Florida, I definitely think it's worth taking a detour. But if you can't make it out there, stop by their booth at the 49th Annual International Arid Society's Tropical Plant Expo this September 19th and 20th. They're one of this year's platinum sponsors and they'll be bringing many of the plants you saw in this video, plus some exciting new hybrids. I'll have links to EFG Orchids, their social media, and the expo tickets down in the description below. Don't forget to subscribe and check out EFG Orchids for more educational content. If you need more green, check out the tourist playlist, or this video YouTube thinks you'll enjoy. I'll see you next week. Byeeee!