Magic liquid

Hi All,
      I’ve been enjoying the photos of the southern hemisphere flowers.  Now for a question.  In the flowering season I try to make every flower count.  When flowers are cut and kept in water for a few days or longer is there anything that can be added to the water to encourage the flowers to last longer or even grow larger.  Possibly a fungicide or dilute fertiliser??  I’d welcome any suggestions or comments.
      I’ve just finished planting 95% of my bulbs here in N Ireland.
                                                       Regards
   Derrick

15 comments for “Magic liquid

  1. Most things that get added to the water like Sprite only attract bacteria.  Probably a tiny amount of bleach is good because it kills bacteria.  There are also powdery substances from florists that help somewhat, but the best thing is to keep the water clean by changing it daily or at least every other day.

    Joanna

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  2. I asked the same thing of Melissa Redding after finding out that some of her amazingly beautiful flowers at the last am national had been stored for over a week.  I hope she’ll expand on this, but basically she told me to pick them young and store them COLD – just a few degrees above freezing – in plain water.  She has a dedicated fridge for this which I think came out of a restaurant and is not frost-free.  After some experiments with my home fridge I found that I could not get the bottom shelf below 43F but that the top shelf will go below freezing.  So I plan to experiment this spring and store food on the bottom and flowers at the top.  (Yeah, I know, no slowly rotting veggies – they go in a cooler during daff season.)  Since this will be experimental I’ll be able to use the excuse that “it’s not my flowers that’s the problem, it’s my fridge.”
    Kathleen Simpson
    WV – where it may finally be cool and damp enough to plant this weekend
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  3. Another thing you can do to prolong the life of the cut flowers is to slice the very bottom of the stem on a diagonal cut with an extremely sharp blade. Then every couple of days slice off another “razor” thin slice to freshen up the cut and remove any damaged tissue or fungus or bacteria that is forming on this cut.
     
    Probably the most important thing to do is to keep the blooms in a very humid or extremely high humidity in a cool/cold location. Modern day refrigerators remove all of the moisture as this condenses on the cooling coils and then automatically is drained during defrosting every few hours. Some refrigerators allow you to turn off the automatic defrosting and switch this to a manual defrost mode during daffodil season.
     
    Low humidity in a fridge with air blowing across the blooms from the fan will carry water out of the petals. You can see how much water a daffodil bloom loses by putting a few drops of food coloring in the water. The more coloring that ends up in the bloom or the faster the coloring gets into the bloom the faster that flower is losing moisture and the quicker it will die or the shorter time the bloom will last.
     
    With the food coloring you can experiment a little with temperature and refrigeration and humidity and see which combination takes the longest to get the coloring spread through out the blooms. You might also experiment with light and darkness. But I doubt if you can put enough artificial light on a bloom stem to make any food for the bloom itself. Once cut a daffodil stem will not continue to grow or at least not enough that you can notice it. Keith Kridler Mt. Pleasant, Texas
     
     

  4. Another thing you can do to prolong the life of the cut flowers is to slice the very bottom of the stem on a diagonal cut with an extremely sharp blade. Then every couple of days slice off another “razor” thin slice to freshen up the cut and remove any damaged tissue or fungus or bacteria that is forming on this cut.
     
    Probably the most important thing to do is to keep the blooms in a very humid or extremely high humidity in a cool/cold location. Modern day refrigerators remove all of the moisture as this condenses on the cooling coils and then automatically is drained during defrosting every few hours. Some refrigerators allow you to turn off the automatic defrosting and switch this to a manual defrost mode during daffodil season.
     
    Low humidity in a fridge with air blowing across the blooms from the fan will carry water out of the petals. You can see how much water a daffodil bloom loses by putting a few drops of food coloring in the water. The more coloring that ends up in the bloom or the faster the coloring gets into the bloom the faster that flower is losing moisture and the quicker it will die or the shorter time the bloom will last.
     
    With the food coloring you can experiment a little with temperature and refrigeration and humidity and see which combination takes the longest to get the coloring spread through out the blooms. You might also experiment with light and darkness. But I doubt if you can put enough artificial light on a bloom stem to make any food for the bloom itself. Once cut a daffodil stem will not continue to grow or at least not enough that you can notice it. Keith Kridler Mt. Pleasant, Texas
     
     

  5. Another thing you can do to prolong the life of the cut flowers is to slice the very bottom of the stem on a diagonal cut with an extremely sharp blade. Then every couple of days slice off another “razor” thin slice to freshen up the cut and remove any damaged tissue or fungus or bacteria that is forming on this cut.
     
    Probably the most important thing to do is to keep the blooms in a very humid or extremely high humidity in a cool/cold location. Modern day refrigerators remove all of the moisture as this condenses on the cooling coils and then automatically is drained during defrosting every few hours. Some refrigerators allow you to turn off the automatic defrosting and switch this to a manual defrost mode during daffodil season.
     
    Low humidity in a fridge with air blowing across the blooms from the fan will carry water out of the petals. You can see how much water a daffodil bloom loses by putting a few drops of food coloring in the water. The more coloring that ends up in the bloom or the faster the coloring gets into the bloom the faster that flower is losing moisture and the quicker it will die or the shorter time the bloom will last.
     
    With the food coloring you can experiment a little with temperature and refrigeration and humidity and see which combination takes the longest to get the coloring spread through out the blooms. You might also experiment with light and darkness. But I doubt if you can put enough artificial light on a bloom stem to make any food for the bloom itself. Once cut a daffodil stem will not continue to grow or at least not enough that you can notice it. Keith Kridler Mt. Pleasant, Texas
     
     

  6. In response to Kathleen’s prompting:

    My season was very early last year.  When blooming began a month before Murphys, I began to post photos on Daffnet.  Brian Duncan wrote and suggested that I begin to pick and refrigerate, and felt that some would last.  So I did that.  I dated all stems as I picked them.  I had previously kept blooms for 3 weeks, but never longer than that.  I use only plain water.

    The refrigerator Kathleen mentions is a very old double-wide Pepsi fridge with sliding doors. It is not a thing of beauty, but very useful. It must have lived its glory years in a gas station, then had a stint with a camellia fancier, and finally time with Bob Johnson of NCDS who shows both camellias and daffodils.  Bob sold it to us.  So far as I have been able to tell, it is neither frost free nor does it have a thermostat.  But in the cool spring temps in the garage, it holds temps of 32-38.  I keep a large baking tray in the bottom with a water-soaked beach towel folded in it.  I regularly replenish the water in the tray to exceed the capacity of the towel and leave some standing water, and the towel increases evaporation area.  We have the two remote sensors for a Cross “weather station” in opposite corners of the fridge so we can be aware of the temperatures it is holding.

    I pick stems and put them in tepid or warm water in vases for a few hours.  Then I clean them,  record them by date and cultivar in a spreadsheet, sort them into categories, and recut the stems as they are put into narrow cylindrical vases from the dollar store.  These vases are packed as compactly as possible into the pepsi fridge, and end up being in chronological order of date picked. I actually put the vases into low divided boxes so that they aren’t tippy on the wire shelves, and to make them easier to handle. I try to have the blooms interfere with one another as little as possible, while still maximizing the storage. I avoid having blooms touch the walls. For Murphys I picked 976 stems, and John had blooms in the fridge also.

    I have completely blacked out the glass by taping on mylar/closed cell foam windshield sun protectors over it.  These also are from the dollar store, and fit neatly.

    The day before the show, I take the blooms all to the dining room table to sort.  Some will be past, and they are discarded.  Some will have grown in size and substance, or such cultivars as Creag Dubh may have intensified significantly in color.

    At Murphys I exhibited many blooms that had been picked for 3 weeks, and a few that had been in the fridge longer than that, however the yield of usable flowers picked longer than 3 weeks dropped off significantly.  When using stems stored for several weeks, one must be sure to check for condition shortly prior to judging, as in a warm show room, they can suddenly collapse.

    That’s the story.  But the answer to the original question Derrick posed is simply “water.”

    Melissa

    ps:
    For those of you at the Board Meeting, I am sorry that I was unable to come.  My car was demolished by a driver who turned abruptly in front of me on Wednesday, about 4:15, . She was taken off to jail in handcuffs, DUI.  I was still too shaky to want to travel on Thursday morning, but feel quite fine now on Friday morning (though I haven’t unpacked my suitcase yet!)  Thank goodness for airbags and my sturdy little RAV4. My few bruises don’t amount to much, but we’re not sure yet whether the car will be declared totalled.

     

  7. My goodness, Melissa – I hope you are healing nicely after your accident!  Thank you for your detailed description of how you preserve your flowers for show – the Daffodil Society of Minnesota had to hold many of our flowers for several weeks last spring, since we could not schedule our show in its usual venue until mid-May instead of the first week of May, the preferred time for us in the far North. We worked very hard to keep the blooms refrigerated and in good shape, and as a result had the greatest number of entries ever, and they looked pretty good too! Ethel Smith

     

  8. We need to keep everything clean- impossible to do when cleaning bulbs?
    I agree with Clay that bleach is great for cleaning coolers- diluted it works better
    but I am not sure why, ALcohol- rubbibg allcohol also works well and while I
    am in the chemical department- I will be wasting staging fluid because I plan to
    get some better staging fluid this afternoon
    John Beck
    (Joe Hamm will agree with me that cleaning daffodils (bulbs)needs
    staging fluid just as much as if not more so than placing them in the shows as blooms…)

     


  9. It’s not magic and it’s not secret–there are lots of tested recipes for extending the life of cut flowers out there on the internet. Almost invariably, there are four “secret” ingredients to the “magic” formula. First, water. Second, sugar to provide energy/food. Third, something to help keep the pores of the stem open so as to facilitate the uptake of water and food. Some recipes use lemon juice, others white vinegar, and others use Sprite or the equivalent on the theory that it combines the first three ingredients. Most recipes also include a fourth ingredient–usually a tiny (REALLY tiny) amount of bleach to retard fungal growth. I think all this is just a homemade version of the stuff you get in little packets with your anniversary flowers, just as good and a lot cheaper.

  10. Derrick, having read all the answers that were good I’d like to add one more thing.  If you have the modern fridge that will wick away the moisture from your Daffs, you can dedicate all or part of your space to the lovely flowers by tenting the space and putting the flowers in water and on the wet toweled tray to provide humidity within the tent.  If you have used the top shelf to place the plastic and have available space there, you can get a cheap lidded plastic container and do your miniatures the same as the tented ones and place the lid on top. That way you can lift the container out and add new flowers and change the water, etc.  I usually make a flap in the tented area to do the maintenance on the flowers.  This is a dedicated fridge during Daff season. 
    Hope you have scadoodlings to enter next year!  Let us know how you do. 

  11. Hi Derrick,
    No one has mentioned storing daffodils without water in the refrigerator.  I store them in plastic bags, put as many in as will fit (I don’t worry about them touching), and seal the bag with a “twist-em.”  Lay the bags on a shelf in the refrigerator.  I alternate them with the blossom end one way, fill the shelf, then start on the other end, placing the blossoms over the stems of the previous bags.  I’ve kept flowers up to three weeks this way.  At show time, some may be wilted.  Make a new cut on the stem end, and place them in water.  Most will revive and be just fine.
    Mary Lou

  12. Is there any recent news from Joe? I hope his recovery is progressing well.
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  13. I have not talked to him recently but expect him to be at our bulb sale soon. Will send you information after I talk with him. Vijay

  14. Hi Derrick and All

    Here is a recipe I was given by a seasoned exhibitor of cut flowers a couple of years ago. I haven’t felt the need to use it myself but I have had the recipe confirmed by other experienced growers.
    1 gallon water
    8 teaspoons sugar
    1 teaspoon milton ( bleach)
    1 teaspoon alum
    I have a rose growing friend who bought some bare root roses from South Africa included in the packaging he assures me was an order form for Viagra which he thought would would prolong their life and help overcome weak necks? Again I have no personal experience.
    Regards
    Bob Moore
    Ross shire Scotland where we have a pleasant autumn day with the trees changing colour fast
  15. 

    Hi Derrick
     
    Bob’s solution is the one all experienced Chrysanthemum growers use but beware Derek Bircumshaw used it on his daffs and most of his white perianths turned greenish. I used this solution the first year I grew daffodils and the same happened to mine. I think it is the alum which is used to make the cut flower draw on hard wood plants which causes the trouble.  The Milton is the sterilent and the sugar is the food. That is why I changed to commercial Crystal and as my first message said, there are different types and the one you need is for soft stemmed varieties such as Tulips and Daffodils, the other types can be too strong.
     
    As a serious exhibitor for some 35 years plus, I would not go to any show without “staging fluid” (Bourbon or Whisky dosed in coke), it does nothing for the flower except maybe making them look bigger if you drink too much, but it does help to keep me warm.
     
    Regards
     
    Roger
     
     

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