How to Preserve a Gerber Daisy

Gerber daisies are an extremely popular flower when it comes to wedding bouquets. Once cut, the flowers often undergo some pretty serious stress. Gerbers are fairly delicate as far as cut flowers go anyway, so you need to take some steps to preserve them so you can enjoy them in a vibrant, alive state for as long as possible before they begin to wilt and fade.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Drinking straws
• Scissors
• Newspaper
• Wide mouth vase
• Water
• Aspirin
• Sunlight

1. Cut the daisies early in the morning. You should cut as close to the ground as possible without cutting into the rest of the plant.

2. Place the daisies immediately in tepid water. Tepid means that the water is neither warm nor cold. Place them in the water as you cut them, rather than cutting a bouquet and then inserting it in the water.

3. Dissolve an aspirin in the water. This will keep the daisies fresh and alive for significantly longer, even you end up removing them from the water and placing them in a bouquet.

4. Support the stems. Gerber daisies have weak stems, which can lead to them looking more droopy more quickly. To prevent unnecessary wear on the stems, wrap the bouquet in a newspaper before sitting it in the water. You can also slit the sides of drinking straws and wrap them around individual stems to keep the daisies "off their feet" so to speak.

5. Make sure that there is sunlight directly overhead. Gerber daisies will turn toward sunlight just like sunflowers. As a result, the best way to keep them looking perky is to make sure that the sunlight is coming from overhead. Otherwise, they will turn or twist on their stems to face the light, making them look droopier.

Tips & Warnings

• If you want to preserve the daisies permanently by drying them, you can either hang them upside down for several weeks or you can microwave them in a silica gel bead bath to preserve their colors. Gerber daisies do not respond particularly well to natural drying, so unless you do not mind fragile, brownish flowers, use silica gel to preserve them.