Keeping flowers fresh
Tips & Tricks to get more from your flowers
What you need to display flowers
- Any flowers that make their way into your home should be displayed in a clean vase. So dust off your vases before filling them with fresh water. You should also remove any limescale deposits. Perhaps you could rinse them with a little vinegar.
- Make sure that the vase has a large enough opening to ensure that the stalks of the flowers don’t get crushed.
The flower water
- Freshness retainers reduce the growth of bacteria and give the flower additional nutrients.
- Flowers like it neither too warm nor too cold. This also goes for the temperature of the water. Lukewarm water is best for flowers.
Preparing the flowers
- If flowers come into the warmth from wintry outdoor temperatures, you should wait half an hour before taking the film wrap off. This gives the flowers time to get used to the warm indoor air.
- Remove the lower leaves, as foliage will soon rot in the water and reduce the water quality for the flowers.
- Cut the stems at an angle. A freshly cut edge enables the flower to absorb water more effectively.
Preserve the beauty of flowers
- Generally speaking, a shady place without through draughts is ideal for your flowers. If they are standing on the kitchen table, you should make sure that your fruit bowl isn’t too close by. The ripening gases from the fruit can accelerate the wilting of the flowers.
- Changing the water regularly and cutting the stems afresh can keep your flowers looking lovely for longer.
The outlier among flowers
- Tulips need lots of cold, fresh water in order to stay spruce for longer and not to start drooping too quickly. The important thing is not replacing but refilling the water daily in order to maintain the optimal fill level of 5–7 cm in the vase at all times.
- If you have roses, which have a milky sap flowing through their stems, or other hard-stemmed varieties, dip the freshly cut stem ends briefly in properly boilingwater before putting them in water in a vase in the normal way. It sounds crazy, but it works.
- Daffodils and hyacinths are difficult characters as they secrete a toxic slime. Ideally, display them on their own or, if not, put them in water on their own for a day to ‘drain’ them a little first.