Field Notes for June 2014

by Tami Field Floral manager

Happy June everyone!

Binleys is full of color and flowers are blooming. With everyone planting gardens, we often hear questions of how to care for cut flowers.

Whether you are cutting flowers from your garden or buying cut flowers at Binleys, you want your cuts to last as long as possible.

While we hear many theories like a teaspoon of sugar in the water or a crushed aspirin in the water, you can save yourself a lot of experimentation and angst simply by following a few simple steps that are tried and proven to help cut flowers last longer. Use specially formulated products, such as Floralife Cut Flower Food.

• Buy from a professional florist, not a convenience or grocery store. The design team at Binleys would love to hear from you and let you know what is freshest in the shop. *Picking longer lasting flowers is pretty self- explanatory. Chose things such as carnations, daisies, and alstromeria. Binleys carries a large variety of colors in most of these.
• Try to cut or buy within an hour of getting your flowers in water. If you know its going to be more than that, its worth it to ask that they be water tubed.
• The most important ingredient to keeping flowers fresh, is fresh clean water. Cut your stems at an angle under water, and change your vase water every couple of days again giving the flowers a fresh slanted cut. Try not to overcrowd your vase; sometimes less is more.
• Lastly, keep them cool as you can. Although the ideal temperature to store flowers is between 40-45 degrees, I know that this isn’t the norm in most cases, keeping them in an air conditioned room would be best.