The Organic Garden - Journal

Flower Care Instructions:

The goal of caring for your flowers is to  provide the hydration and nutrition necessary to allow your flowers to look beautiful and last long.

START WITH:

Water Quality:   In general tap water is just fine, but avoid very hard or salt softened water

Clean Vases: Bacteria is the enemy of flowers, always start with impeccably clean vases. Use bleach to clean vases between uses.

Strip those stems: Leaves breed bacteria, remove all leaves that will be under water before placing flowers in a vase

More Water: Use large vases that hold lots of water. If you stuff many stems in a small quantity of water it will be very hard to keep the water clean and the flowers will not last as long. In our tests a single flower in a vase always out lasts the big mixed bouquet stuffed tightly in a vase

 Keep them Cool:  Keep your flowers in a cool part of the house.

Avoid Direct Sunlight: Flowers love the sun in the field, but once in a vase direct sunlight is very hard on them.

 Flower Food? Most flowers last perfectly well in plain water, but some need some extra sugar to allow them to thrive. We recommend flower food be added to the vase water for Zinnias and Dahlias. (By the way, flower food is mostly sugar with some citric acid to lower water PH and a powdered bleach to prevent bacterial growth in the sugar rich water)

FINISH WITH:

Change the Water: If you wouldn’t drink the water, your flowers won’t either! Some flowers are ‘clean’ (lisianthus, anemone) and will not require many water changes and others (sunflowers, zinnias) are ‘dirty’ and may require daily water changes to keep the water clear.

Re-cut the Stems: After several days it may be hard to keep your vase water clean because the bottom of the flower stems are starting to get soft. Simply cut off the bottom inch or two of stem to get to ‘new’ stem and change the vase water.