How many days flowers last when displayed in a vase, whether they came from your garden or local market, depends on the care they were given previously by growers and distributors, and what you do for them at home. Once cut from their parent plants, blooms need a great deal of care to maintain freshness and appearance, their so-called vase life. Their stems are often dipped in a citric acid solution to inhibit bacterial growth, and they may be hydrated for six to twenty-four hours in water. They may be stored in buckets of cold water (e.g., thirty-four degrees Fahrenheit for roses) along with chilling during shipment and once at your local florist shop. A rose, with an average cut life of twenty-one days, should have ten to fourteen days of vase life in your home or workplace.
Use fresh water, commercial flower food, and the following tips to enhance your enjoyment of cut flowers. Commercially available flower food contains sucrose (sugar), which gives the flowers a source of energy to make up for the loss of leaves. An acidifier brings the water’s pH closer to that of the natural cell sap and helps stabilize the color of your flowers. Flower food also contains a bacterial inhibitor to help retard the growth of bacteria (cloudiness) in the water. Bacteria and fungi can plug up the water-transporting cells in the flower stems.
Here are some helpful guidelines based upon my experience and research by the staff at Grower Direct. An extensive table of vase life and ethylene sensitivity can be found on the author’s website.
Some Do’s and Don’ts of Fresh-Flower Care
Do’s
• Always use a clean vase and pure water. Change or top up water daily if possible!
• When first placing flowers in water, use warm (100–110 degrees F) water, since this will be absorbed (along with the plant food) better than cold water.
• Always use commercial fresh-flower food (packet of white powder). Use the recommended amount of food; don’t overfeed your blooms.
• After purchase, cut off at least one inch of the flower stems with a sharp knife. Slanted cuts are best. This can be done with the stems submerged in a bowl of water (for purists!).
• Remove any flowers that look less than completely fresh. This will help keep the remaining flowers in the display looking great longer.
Don’ts
• Never use a homemade substitute for flower food, including aspirin, Viagra tablets, soda pop, bleach, or copper pennies. They don’t work, or not as well as the commercial food packets.
• Avoid sodium, fluoride, and minerals in water. Sodium in soft water is toxic to roses and carnations. Fluoride may be great for preventing dental cavities, but it is harmful to Gerbera, Gladiolus, and Freesia blooms. Hard (mineralized) water can also shorten the life of cut blooms.
• Never remove all the leaves from the stems.
• Never place your flowers near fresh fruit (especially apples) or cigarette smoke. Both produce ethylene gas, which will shorten floral life.
• Never place flowers in direct sunlight or other sources of excessive heat. This is why florists store their flowers in cold rooms.
• Don’t use commercial flower food in lead-crystal or metal vases. The acid in the flower food will react with the metal.