Flower Care Tips

Good Choice Flowers Tips For Keeping Your Bouquets Beautiful

It’s always a lovely surprise when someone sends an arrangement of flowers, and you want to get every day of vibrant beauty from their gift. Fortunately, it’s not as hard as you think to take care of your freshly cut flowers when you receive them. Follow these tips to get the most out of your bouquets:

• 1. Keep Them Cool
• 2. Set the Stage
• 3. Trim the Stems
• 4. Feed ‘Em, Seymour
• 5. Enjoy!

Keep Them Cool

There’s a reason florist’s keep their stock in refrigerated cases. Too much heat is your bouquet’s enemy, and will make them wilt and decay faster. While you don’t need to keep your flowers with your food, when you bring your flowers home or to the office, choose a cool place to store them while you prepare a cool place to display them. Try to keep your bouquet in a place that’s between 65-21 degrees Fahrenheit. Keep them away from drafts, appliances, and electronics as well. These things often either give off a lot of heat or have fans – or both – and will dry out your bouquet more quickly.

Set The Stage

You might think you can just stick your bouquet in a vase with some water and be done with it, but keeping freshly cut flowers pretty isn’t quite that easy. That said, it only takes a few minutes to get your bouquet ready for display if it didn’t already come in a vase or planter. Choose a vase that’s the right width to hold your bouquet without pressing into the stems. You want to be able to pull the bouquet out later, since if you care for your bouquet well, it will last long enough for you to need to change the water. Consider the height of your vase when compared to the bouquet as well, if your vase is very short, you may have to do extra trimming, so your display doesn’t topple.

Give yourself enough space to work, preferably near a trash bin. Gather a pair of sharp scissors, your vase, and your bouquet. A Sharpie marker might also be helpful, but isn’t necessary. Carefully remove any wrapping or packaging like cellophane or tissue paper and discard it. If your bouquet came with tight rubber bands or clips, you’ll likely want to keep those on during the next step.

Trim the Stems

Now’s the part where you’ll make sure your bouquet will fit inside the vase without falling over. Just hold up your flower arrangement near the side of your vase to get a good idea of how much you’ll need to cut off the bottom. Mark the place with your finger or your helpful marker, and get ready to cut. Take your time here, measure carefully. You’ll only get to cut once.

When you’re satisfied that you’ve measured thoroughly, carefully cut the stems on an angle. This will give the stems more surface area to pull water up through their stems. They will still do that for a while, even though they’ve been cut.

This is also the time to cut off or remove any extra foliage that might touch or go under the water once you put the flower arrangement in the vase. If submerged, the greenery will decay faster, encouraging bacteria and algae that you don’t want!

Once you’ve trimmed everything, get ready to move your bouquet into water (with food) quickly. You don’t want them ‘drinking’ too much air. You can even cut them in the sink, underwater, if you prefer. Make sure to dry your scissors well if you do.

Feed ‘Em Seymour

While you were unwrapping your bouquet, you probably also found a little packet of powder. This is for feeding your bouquet. It’s actually still alive for a little while, and this stuff is like life support. The specific instructions may differ, so make sure to read whatever’s printed on the package. In general, though, you’ll add a small amount of the powder to a pre-measured amount of lukewarm water. Dissolve the powder in the water. Next, place your bouquet gently into the vase, and pour the water carefully into it. This will make sure you don’t overflow the vase by adding flowers to the water.

What if your bouquet didn’t come with the little packet? Use a tablet of Aspirin! This household headache medicine is also a tried and true way to keep your flowers fresher, longer. Crush the tab and remove any coating, then dissolve it into the water instead of plant food. It works like a charm!

No matter how you feed your bouquet, change the water (and add additional food) every few days, and remove any wilted flowers and greens. This will keep your flower arrangement fresh and clean, and your blooms bright and gorgeous as long as possible.

Enjoy!

We promise, it takes longer to read this article than it does to do the tips. But since you ARE doing the work, don’t forget to actually appreciate your bouquet every day you have it. Enjoy a cup of coffee or tea near your bouquet. Think happy thoughts about the person who sent it to you: even if you treated yourself to it! We’re sure if you do, your flowers will bring you a smile every time.