IN JUST TWO days (Tuesday at 9:24 p.m. Pacific time), summer (finally) begins.
It is the solstice, and for many of us, it is about gorgeous weather, long days, weekend barbecues and beautiful flowers everywhere.
Often, however, the delight of having lovely arrangements from our yard has dissipated by the next day as the container water turns cloudy, develops a less-than-appealing odor, and the flowers themselves wilt.
And because you learned last week of the extraordinary results of the dynamic duo (i.e., pinching and deadheading), let’s learn how to condition and arrange all these flowers to better “share the wealth.”
Fear not: A few tricks and fundamental understanding of your freshly cut flowers can turn those beautiful bouquets into a week of gratitude.
Haste makes flower waste
A big mistake some gardeners make is thinking that the faster you cut and get the blooms arranged, the longer they will last.
Not so. Flowers and ornamental greens require a period of conditioning if you want them to last for days rather than hours.
Conditioning — a treatment you do to the cut flowers after they are harvested and before they are arranged — isn’t difficult but does vary greatly from one particular flower to another.
For the most part, it involves immersing the cuttings in water for a 12- to 24-hour period, but it also involves other nuances.
Carry water out to the cutting fields and, immediately upon harvest, put them into the first drink tank.
Cut at 45-degree angle
Always cut your flowers, stems and greens at a slant, preferably at a 45-degree angle.
This angled cut not only opens up a greater surface area for water absorption but also keeps the just-picked stalk from resting flat on the bottom of the container.
Don’t pack your flowers in too tightly.
A loosely placed bunch of flowers can breathe, and potential disease problems won’t occur immediately.
Remember the plant when you cut your flowers, too.
Don’t cut the flower or leaf (for greens) at the desired length for the arrangement.
Instead, cut it at the best location for the plant to encourage more blooms and tighter compact plants.
This is crucial. Cutting too short or long can damage the plant severely and lengthen its time to rebloom, or bring a premature death or dormancy.
After you have harvested the blooms and moved on to arranging, you can select the long stems or cut them back to achieve the ideal lengths.
Be sure your containers, harvest buckets and vases are cleaned well between uses.
Use soap and water, and scrub and rinse them out.
If containers are dirty, bacteria start to breed at phenomenal rates, and they will quickly plug up the small conducting tubes that transport the water upward.
Keep your knife, scissors and pruners extremely sharp.
A nice, clean surgical cut won’t crush those small water tubes — and again, water can flow more easily.
Use lukewarm water
After the flowers are cut, placed loosely in lukewarm water and carried into the house or garden shed, the conditioning starts.
Take the blooms one at a time and leaf-strip them.
This involves removing the leaves low on the stem that eventually will be down in the water of the vase or will obscure other flowers on the bouquet.
As a general rule, only the top few leaves are left.
This is crucial, for not only are the lower leaves first in line to suck up the water, but they are the first to rot away and cause clogging bacteria and stench.
Your next move is to tip away any plume-type flowers like delphinium, snapdragons, gladiolas, celosia, salvia, lupine, liatris or astilbe.
By completely removing the last few buds on these, you eliminate the curlover or droop associated with these blooms.
This also allows the rest of the buds to fully develop into a magnificent flowerhead.
Split woody-plant stems
In the case of woody stem plants like ornamental fruit, hydrangeas, wisteria or willows, split the stem up one half-inch with a sharp knife.
This helps the water rise up.
In the case of milky or very sappy plants like milkweed, day lily or peonies, char the ends in an open flame immediately upon cutting — and again if the stalk is trimmed for an arrangement.
After these tasks are done, again place the flowers into water — generally cold water this time — and usually fully up to their necks.
Of course, there are many exceptions to the rule, but this covers 95 percent of your cut flowers.
So gather up your supplies, dedicate a conditioning area and become the neighborhood florist.
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Andrew May is an ornamental horticulturist who dreams of having Clallam and Jefferson counties nationally recognized as “Flower Peninsula USA.” Send him questions c/o Peninsula Daily News, P.O. Box 1330, Port Angeles, WA 98362, or email news@peninsula dailynews.com (subject line: Andrew May).
