Caring for Fresh-Cut Flowers

Video Transcript

"Hi this Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment we're going to talk about caring for fresh cut flowers. Now fresh cut flowers are such a delight and whether you buy them at the store or you get them out of your own personal garden, they're always a joy to the person that receives them. So when you're caring for your fresh cut flowers, there's a few rules that I follow. And basically I like to cut the flowers out of the garden either late at night or early morning and not in the heat of the day. And the same thing, you try not to keep your fresh cut flowers out of the sun once you cut them, try to cut them in the morning or bring them home from the store either at night or in the morning and not leave them in a hot car for hours. And once you get them home, I always like to cut off the stems at least a couple inches and put some fresh water in right away. And so just by cutting the stems a couple inches every few days and changing the water out to fresh water, you will get your flowers to last a lot longer. You can add aspirin, you can add sugar, you can do all of that, but in the end, your flowers want fresh water just like you do. And so just by cutting the stems and changing the water out every few days, you'll get your flowers to last a lot longer. And also just by peeling off some of the bad petals and just keeping all of the fresher petals, you will find that even if it looks a little tacky, by pulling off a couple of the bad petals, it'll still look good for a lot longer. And my best advice that I can give you for cut flowers is if you're gone all day or if you're asleep all night and you have a room that's cooler, but not freezing let's say if it's in the winter, it's always nice if you have a nice really warm house but your garage is kind of on the cool side but not freezing and you're gone all day, leave your flowers in the coolest room of the house, the basement, the garage, anywhere where they're not going to get really warm and that way they'll last a lot longer. So make sure and keep them in the coolest spot you can find when you're not home and then that way you can put them back into your living room or back into your bedroom and you can enjoy them for a lot longer. And so even when you have a bouquet of flowers, if a couple of the flowers look tacky, just pull them out and add some fresh ones and just don't throw all of them away because they're so beautiful and you can always enjoy plants like this, carnations are going to last three weeks but these roses might only last a week. So why not enjoy those carnations with a little of this dried status and get rid of the roses when they turn tacky and you can enjoy for a lot longer and even dry it. So taking care of your cut flowers is really easy as long as you don't take it too seriously."