Tips for cut flowers

If you’re cutting flowers for a vase we’ve got a few tips to make them last longer and more beautifully:

• Cut the stems with a clean angled cut and putting them into a bucket of clean water in a cool place for at least two hours before arranging them. The received advice these days is not to smash woody stems as this destroys the water vessels.

• Hold the ends of the stems in boiling water poured into a mug to sear them.  Thin floppy stems would only need about 10 seconds, whereas a woody stem like a lilac can be held there for a minute. Even when stems have already flopped, they can make a fabulous recovery when you do this!

• Make sure that there is no foliage below the water line.

• Many believe that you can keep the stems from rotting by adding one part Sprite to three parts water to the vase (or a teaspoon of white granulated sugar), and a few drops of bleach. The jury’s out, but it seems to me that you can prolong the life of your vase of flowers very well by refreshing the water every couple of days.
  
  
• Don’t put your vase near a bowl of fruit, which gives off tiny amounts of ethylene which will age the flowers prematurely.  For the same reason, deadhead faded blooms regularly.
  
  NB You can see a list of our 10 favourite flowers for cutting in our post here.
  
  More NB If you’re not already a subscriber and you’d like a bit more gardening chitchat from the3growbags, please type your email address here and we’ll send you a new post every Saturday morning.

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