There are many articles that speak to caring for specific flowers. The problem is that most of these articles are written for people with general flower knowledge. What if this doesn’t apply to you, though? Wouldn’t it be nice to have some content that is geared towards newer flower owners?
It’s never a bad thing to return to the basics, right? Well, it doesn’t get more fundamental than this, so get ready to learn. In this article, you can expect to learn the following:
- Watering your flowers
- Trimming your flower stems
- Danger of ripening vegetables and fruits
- Heat and light
- Food packets
These are five of the most basic things to know where flowers are concerned. It’s no fun to spend your time trying to grow flowers and then have them die. It’s very discouraging, which is why this article is dedicated to helping you to prevent that from happening.
Watering Your Flowers
When you think about flowers, watering them is usually something that comes to mind. In the same way that food provides you with nourishment and health, flowers survive by drinking water. The water has nutrients that help to promote growth. This is even more so when the roots are in soil that also contains nutrients.
Flowers tend to drink more water than you can imagine, so you need to stay on top of your watering as much as you can. If your flowers are in a vase, there’s only water since there’s no soil. This makes it easier to see what is happening and how quickly the water is going away.
You need to keep the water at an acceptable level, and you should change it altogether every two or three days. Though it may not all be used by the flower, water becomes less healthy the longer it sits.
Trimming Your Flower Stems
If you purchase flowers on the road, the chances are that you saw them sitting in water. It’s also likely that they don’t get to do so on the way to your house. What you may not know is that this can be a serious problem for your flowers.
The exposed end of the stem is where the flower absorbs its water to stay alive. When this stem is removed from the water, the end can dry easily. A dried end has dead cells, which prevent the flower from adequately absorbing water.
If you want your flowers to survive, you must help them to absorb water effectively again in your vase. You can do this by cutting the stems before they go in the vase. This exposes fresh tissue in the plant, which makes it easy for the flower to absorb water again.
Danger of Ripening Vegetables and Fruits
Fruits don’t sound like something that can cause any issues for your flowers, right? After all, many of these fruits came from flowers in the first place. However, certain fruits can spell disaster for your flowers when they are in proximity. Apples and bananas are two of the biggest offenders in this regard.
Have you ever heard of ethylene? You probably haven’t heard of the gas because it does nothing to humans. It’s a gas that is generated by certain fruits as they ripen. Unfortunately, your flowers don’t share your immunity.
Remember how fruits come from flowers? Well, plants use ethylene to get their flowers to become fruits and drop petals. The fruits that emerge don’t ever stop producing the gas. This means that they can destroy your flowers by being near them. So, if your plants keep dropping petals and they happen to be near fruit, you know why.
Heat and Light
It’s very likely that you have heard that flowers need heat and light to survive. Of course, the natural heat and light provided by the sun are preferred to artificial sources. Plants use glucose, oxygen, and sunlight for photosynthesis. This is a process that plants use to make food.
The key point here is that sunlight is very important for this to take place. Even if you didn’t know all that, you know that plants need sunlight. Therefore, you may be tempted to put your flower vase where sunlight can reach it.
What you may not know is that cut flowers have different needs. Remember that flowers are produced from mature plants. The sun encourages plants and flowers to mature.
This is not the kind of behavior you want your flowers to have, since further maturing means that they may quicken their deaths. That could make for a sad time.
Food Packets
Have you ever seen those little flower food packets? The chances are that you aren’t sure of how beneficial they are. You can get your flowers to last by watering them only. Be that as it may, you can enhance their survival by using flower food packets.
You don’t always need to buy them, since many packaged flowers are bundled with them. One thing that they do is reduce a flower’s dependence on water. This means that watering delinquency is not a big problem for flowers that are fed.
Once cool thing to know is that you can make your own flower food if you want. Use one teaspoon of bleach, one of sugar, and two of lemon juice, to do the trick. Put these into your vase and follow them up with a quart of warm water. Do research first to ensure that your flowers like food.
Summary
Many care tips for flowers are geared towards people who are experts in caring for them. If you’re not an expert, you know that there aren’t enough general knowledge articles for new flower owners.
This article covered some of the most important basic tips to know for such people. These tips included watering, stem trimming, the danger of ripening fruits, heat and light requirements, and food packet tips.
Bringing all these tips together can help you to maintain your flowers for the maximum possible time. Now there’s no need for you to worry about flowers dying prematurely.