harveyc

Tony, I don't ship a lot of plants and use Physan for other purposes, but have not dipped plants I've shipped since they looked clean at the time. However, I think such a dip is a good idea, especially if it's a corm that is being shipped with lots of cut surfaces. I've usually shipped well-rooted pups and didn't see the need for it for a 2-3 day journey. I did receive a corm recently that had some mold on it so I did dip that and let it dry before planting. Maybe the mold would have been prevented if it had had been dipped before shipping. The standard rate for using the dip is 1 teaspoon/gallon of water so it goes quite a ways. Here's a good document for suggested uses of Physan 20 and Phyton 27 (if I had it, I would have dipped the corm with mold in it). http://www.avsa.org/Library/20%20or%...r%20Phyton.pdf

Trying to pack the roots or corm in a manner that prevents them from drying out but not yet too damp to encourage growth of fungi and bacteria is a bit of a balancing act. I think the next time I ship a pup I'll use a Physan 20 solution to dampen a paper towel around the roots.

On another note, when shipping a pup USPS Priority it is very important to try to keep the box under 1 cubic foot or else shipping becomes much more expensive as the weight is based on "dimension weight". A friend recently shipped a pup that cost over $30 to ship because his box was too big but a box under 1 cubic foot would have cost just over $11.

Thanks for bringing this back up, Tony.

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