by Chris_W » Sep 24, 2015 12:24 pm
When I bought them several years ago there was another option to buy 250 of them for $935. I still have a lot of those original 250 left and they are still working fine for me. That was in 2009. Sorry but I've never heard of getting them for $1.00 per kit.
If you are just buying the strips and not the buffer bags then it is cheaper, but the only reason you would do that is if you already had the bags. When preparing a sample you can do multiple strips per bag so may not always need one bag per strip if, for example, you are doing CMV, ArMV, and HVX all at once.
The thing I would recommend is purchasing the 25 and then put multiple plant samples in each kit. You can test 3, 4, or even 5 small pieces of a leaf from different plants at one time in a single buffer bag and if it comes out negative them all of the plants you included in the kit should be negative. Testing 3 would be better because then you could include a little more leaf of each - you don't want too much leaf in the sample or the liquid will be too thick to wick up the strip - but 5 is also doable. The total amount of leaf you want is about the size of a quarter or the size of your thumb print.
The drawback to putting multiple plant samples in a kit is when a positive test comes up. When that happens you will want to test each plant over again. But unless you are seeing visible symptoms or bought from a particularly suspicious hosta source then I imagine most will come up negative.
Hope that helps, and hopefully you only get negative tests.
Chris
