| Product: |
General House/Tips and Hints |
| Date: |
22/11/00 (422 review reads) |
| Rating: |
 |
Advantages: Keeps flowers alive longer
Disadvantages: none
Keep your fresh flowers alive longer!! All you need is a vase of lemonade!!
Fizzy drinks contain the two essential ingredients cut flowers need to live longer, sugar and a bactericide, in this case the dissolved carbon dioxide.
The bactericide keeps the water fresh and the cut end open to take up water, and the sugar feeds the stems and blooms. To see the fizzy drink effect , buy a fresh bunch of carnations and put one stem in a bud vase of lemonade (not slimline) and the other in water.
The fed bloom will last longer and open into a bigger flower.
Another way to keep your displays looking blooming beautiful is to put a copper coin in the water to act as a mild bactericide.
Cut flowers certainly last longer in water if they are fed - but growing techniques and plant - food advances have now improved to give them a much longer life expectancy.
Modern varieties of all the popular cut blooms, including carnations, freesias and roses, have been bred with a long vase - life in mind.
Placed in water enriched with cut - flower foods and kept in a cool room, a life of 14 days is common.
Successful home - made flower life-extenders provide one or both of these qualities. But proprietary cut flower foods used to the manufacturer's recommended strength work much better than the home brews.
Try them on a bunch of freesias, half with the food and the remaining in plain water and you will find they not only last longer but also produce more flowers along the stem, which open larger.
Naturally, the fresher the cut blooms are when you get them and the cooler the room they are in, the longer they last.
Another thing to remember is ethylene, the gas given off by ripe fruit. It reduces the life of many cut flowers considerably, so keep bowls of fruit in another room, away from your flowers.
Modern cut roses have longer, stronger stems and more petals in each flower, but they can sometimes disappoint by dropping their heads.
Where
this happens, take them out of the vase and leave them lying horizontally in some clean cold water - in the bath overnight, for example.
Immersing the stem, leaves and flowers will stiffen them up again.
Make a fresh cut at the stem and re-arrange the flowers in water with food and the roses should not droop again.
Summary:
|
Last comments:
 |
- 11/03/01 Ooh thanks for the tips - shall make sure to try it :o) |
 |
- 15/01/01 My wife has been using lemonade for a number of years to make flowers last a remarkable length of time, yet it is surprising how few people know about it.
Incidentally if you add a little sugar to the lemonade that you drink (or use for flowers) when it has gone a little flat, it will revive it again. |
 |
- 09/01/01 I've got quite a few old pennies from years ago, if your not old enough to have had them from your younger days, ask an older relative, they should have some. or you could go to a collecter or antique shop, you can usually pick up old coppers quite cheap, depending how rare they are.But they are definatly not hard to find!! |
View all
6
comments
|
Deutschland 
España 
Italia 
France - 
