Caring for Your Fresh Cut Flowers

Flowers from your garden are wonderful to look at. Many of us want to admire them inside our homes, as well as out. The most popular way to do that of course, is to cut the flowers from your garden, and bring them in to display inside your home in a vase. You can make a vase out of just about anything that will hold water as well, s long as you have something to keep the flowers in place. Marbles, gravel, rocks, shells, and even moss will all work well for keeping your freshly cut flowers in place. If you happen to cut a stem too short, you can easily fix it by slipping the stem into a drinking straw.

The best time to cut flowers to bring indoors is either early in the morning, or late in the evening. Cooler, cloudy days are ideal too because moisture loss is very low during those days.

There are various ways to keep your cut flowers alive longer too. If you don't have the Floralife that you get from a florist on hand, you can try some of these simple and inexpensive life prolonging ideas. You can mix one gallon of water with 2 teaspoons of medicinal type mouthwash, or you can use one can of CLEAR soft drink mix and one gallon of water and add to your vase. If you happen to have foxglove, you can use about twenty fox glove leaves and a 1/2 cup of boiling water. Let the mixture cool,a nd then pour it into your vase. Of course the more common things that you may have heard work as well. You can crush up an aspirin and add it to the vase water. You can throw a sugar cube into you vase water, or you can add a little bacteria killing laundry bleach to your water as well.

You will also need to prepare the stems of your fresh cut flowers as well. Remove any leaves that will lie below the water level, or they will rot quickly. Cut the bottoms of your stems diagonally so that they have a larger surface to absorb the water too. If you do this step under water it is better because that way the vessels of the stems will not be obstructed by air bubbles. If you have cut some harder stems, such as those from a shrub or a tree, you will want to smash the end of the stem with a hammer so that they can absorb water more easily. Make sure to remove any loose pieces if stem too before putting them into your vase.

Before you put your freshly cut flowers into your vase or container, make sure that they are sparkling clean! Clean vases ensure a longer life for your flowers. To wash vases just add a few drops of bleach to your rinse water. If you have a container or vase with a narrow neck, ass a half cupful of dry beans or peas to the wash water and switch them around in there. This will remove anything that may have been stuck in the narrow stem.

If you have any blooms that have started to wilt, you can try to resuscitate them by re-cutting the stems on a diagonal, and then plunging them into a few inches of warm water for about a half an hour. Then return them to their vase with fresh, cool water. If th room is hot, drop a few ice cubes into the vase. Also, in the evening you can cover your flowers with a damp paper towel. This will refresh and rehydrate the petals.

A couple last ideas for you and your fresh cut flowers...use hair spray to keep blooms from dropping off cut flowers by spraying them lightly with an aerosol hair spray. Finally, you can display your freshly cut flowers in florists foam as well. You can cut the foam into any shape that you wish. You will want to make sure to soak the foam as well. After you add your flowers you can cover the bare spots, or any other unattractive spots with moss.

Next time you are admiring a beautiful flower from your garden, why not snip it off and bring it in the house to enjoy for a little longer. With the tips in this article, you freshly cut flowers should last inside your home for bout a week!