How to Keep Cut Flowers Fresh

Hi this is Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment we are going to talk about how to keep fresh cut flowers fresh. Now I love cut flowers in the house. They are such a joy to smell and just enjoy, mmm they just smell so good and they're great to have in your house and there is a few tricks that you can use to keep them lasting a little bit longer. Now the most important thing that cut flowers need is fresh water so you can use aspirin, you can use bleach, you can use pennies, you can add anything to the water but in the end you are just stopping the water from going bad. It is just like us drinking chlorinated water. If I had a choice I would want fresh water, not chlorinated water and it tastes better when it is fresh and I think that the flowers have the same attitude, they want fresh water. So the most important thing that you can do is every two to three days cut the stems one or two inches up and add fresh water. You will find they last so much longer and another trick that I've found is if you actually cut the flowers under water then they soak up water and they don't soak up air and they seem to last a little bit longer and when you cut them too always cut flowers at an angle because it seems that they will soak up the water and they have more room to soak up water. If you can see on the stem it is turning brown on the bottom and it is not going to be getting any more water but if I cut it under the water at an angle it will last a lot longer. I just change out the water and use fresh water and then it lasts so much longer. And another trick especially with lilies is you just clean them up here and there and with lilies as soon as they open take out the pollen and there is no proof that the actual flower will last longer because the pollen's gone but it looks better and it lasts longer because you don't get pollen all over the flower and it just looks beautiful for a lot longer. Even roses a lot of time you'll have a rose and it will look really bad because it is turning brown but if you just peel off the different petals that don't look good you'll find that that rose is gorgeous for another couple weeks. So a lot of times even if your flowers don't look good by peeling just some of the bad petals off they'll last a lot longer. Another trick that I've found is when you are not home in the middle of the night or if you live in a colder climate and it is really cold and you have got the heater just cranked at night put the flowers in the coldest spot that you can without freezing them. So if you are gone all day just put them out on the back patio. As long as they are not freezing and it is cooler in the house in the Winter time and opposite, if it is the Summer time too put your flowers down in the basement or somewhere where it is really cool so that they will last a lot longer and that way when you are home you just put them out on display and it is just like you are putting in them in a cooler when you are not home and a lot of times you can get one to two extra weeks out of your cut flowers that way. It is an easy way to have beautiful cut flowers for a long period of time.