When you receive a lovely bouquet of flowers that have been hand crafted for you by a Florist Gloucester way such as www.flowershedtewkesbury.co.uk it can be a shame to watch them slowly start to wilt. Your average cut flower should last around 5-7 days as standard with some florists extending this to 10 days.
There are a number of things that you can do at home to help extend the life of your cut flowers.
- Lemonade or Soda Water – pretty much any clear fizzy drink will do the trick. The idea is to add around a quarter of a cup of the lemonade or soda into the water in the vase. The sugars in the drink will help the flowers to bloom for longer. You can top up the soda levels each time you add more water to the vase.
- Sugar – this is essentially the main ingredient of the little sachets that you find attached to shop bought flowers. To make your own sugar based solution at home you should mix together around three tablespoons of sugar and two tablespoons of white wine vinegar to each litre of water that are using. It is important to ensure that this water is warm, but not boiling. You should then add enough water to the vase that will make sure that at least ten centimetres of the flower stems are covered at all times. The mixture helps the flowers to last longer as the sugar is food for the plant and the vinegar helps to keep the bacteria level of the water at an optimum level. No more furry growth on the ends of your flower stems.
- Hair Spray – not only is hair spray useful for holding your favourite hair style in place but it also helps with keeping laces and ribbons in place and also keeping your flowers fresher for longer. This is a method that you will only want to do after a few days as a last attempt to keep your flowers going for longer. It is important that you only spray the undersides of the leaves and flowers and do so from a good distance. The hair spray helps to hold the flower heads and leave in an upright position rather than having them wilt and droop over time.
There are a number of other methods that have been tried including apple cider vinegar, bronze coins placed in the bottom of the vase, vodka and aspirin.