How to Care For Cut Flowers When the Weather is Hot
Fresh flowers in the house are such a pleasure, the subtle scent of them and the glorious look of colour and texture, we respond to flowers with pleasure. Of course you will want them to last as long as possible and even in hot environments there are things you can do to achieve this.
First of all, did you know that flowers and fruit do not like each other? If your bouquet or bunch is near a bowl of ripening fruit, they are in danger.
Fruit gives off a lot of a gas called ethylene and this is what kills cut flowers, the flower produces the same gas but in smaller quantities and this is what makes them eventually die off, so if you have fruit too close, you will hasten the process.The worst culprits are bananas! Keep them elsewhere.
Make sure your vases are clean, rinse with water containing a few drops of bleach. Always have the vase of water ready, cut off half an inch of stem and straight into the water, this is to be sure the flower can drink.
In hot weather or hot rooms, the water in a vase of flowers will produce more than usual bacteria thus making the water go cloudy and blocking the cells in the stems. The flowers can’t drink properly and even if they could, they must have clean water to last well.
You can achieve this in two ways, one is to use a cut flower food which keeps the water clean. In this case just top up the water each day. The other way, if you have no flower food, it to replace the water daily. Clean out the vase as you do and most important, cut some stem off each flower as you replace it in the vase.Flower food also helps with longer vase life, if you have none you can put a soluble aspirin in the water.
Now where should you put the vase? We all tend to display them in the window, nice for all to see of course but if they are likely to be in full sun at any time of the day, this is not the place to put them. Full sun on a flower in the garden is fine, but for cut flowers it is too stressful and will shorten their life drastically.
The same applies to anywhere over or near a source of heat in the room, like a radiator, too hot and the result will be drooping blooms.
So what is the ideal?
Clean water in the vase treated as above, not in the window or above the radiators, away from fresh fruit and in the coolest place available.
Follow these tips and your flowers will look their best and last as long as possible.You need to start out with really fresh blooms though, so when sending flowers, choose a company that grows and picks a lot of their own, see my recommendation below and enjoy your lovely flowers by post.
