How to care for fresh flowers

At BloomThis, one of our FAQs is how to care for fresh flowers. It feels lovely to receive fresh flowers - so you’d want to keep your blooms alive and looking vibrant for as long as possible. It takes a bit of effort and lots of TLC, as flowers are living things too, and they need love and care as much as anyone else does.

Here’s a list of ways to keep your flowers fresh and alive for much longer.

1) Place your blooms in a clean vase

Besides being clean and bacteria-free, which is great for the flowers’ lifespan, pretty vases make really nice Instagram pictures. Take your blooms out of their bouquet, and place them in a vase filled with clean water as the stems need to be hydrated.

2) Feed your flowers

Flowers need to eat too, just like you do. BloomThis provides flower food with your blooms, which basically contain all the extra nutrients and minerals that flowers need to stay healthy. Just place it into the vase from the sachet. Flower food may sound like a small thing but feeding your flowers can actually increase their lifespan by up to 60% - that’s pretty long, even for delicate blooms. Plus, there are chemicals in flower food that stops the growth of bacteria and algae.

If you run out of flower food, some gardening experts have said that you could mix a bit of Sprite or 7-Up into the water. The acid from the soft drink will slow bacteria growth while the sugar will feed the plant. Sounds yummy!

3) Water your flowers

Fill the ⅔ of the vase with cold tap water. Too much may speed up the decay of the stems and too little will impair hydration - it’s kinda like skincare; you can’t do too much or too little, you only need just enough. Remember to change the water every day as any bacteria or dirt present could also be fatal to flowers.

4) Cut stems, lengthen life

Cut approximately 2cm off each stem at a 45 degrees angle and repeat every day. Flower stems will decay and impair hydration so it’s best to cut off what has no value to them.

Snipping off the bottom of your flowers keeps them hydrated, increases their surface area in which water is absorbed through, and lengthens their lifespan altogether. You’ll probably have a shorter bouquet at the end of the week, but they’d still be very much alive.

*Special instructions for roses

Roses need to be cut a little differently - their stems need to be cut underwater to prevent air bubbles from getting trapped in the stems. Just do it in a bowl of water. If your rose looks like they’re drooping, the best measure would be to stick the whole rose in a bowl of water. This step will rehydrate the whole flower and cause the rose head to stand up again.

5) Remove the lower leaves

Remove all the lower leaves, especially if they’re in the water, as none should be present there. Leaves decay much quicker underwater than they do above. Decaying leaves will emit bacteria that could destroy your flowers.

6) Remove wilting flowers

Flowers bloom and wilt at different times so when you observe that a bloom has begun to wilt, remove it quickly, and hence this will avoid spreading bacteria to the other flowers. When you remove a wilting bloom, you’re giving a chance for the others to live longer.

7) Keep your flowers away from direct sunlight

Heat will cause flowers to decay so it’s best to keep them in a cool environment, like an air-conditioned room. Also, fruits and flowers may sound like they go together but fruits actually emit a type of gas when they’re ripening, which may cause your flowers to spoil. So keep flowers away from fruits.

That’s all you need to know about keeping flowers fresh and alive. Flowers are very much “in the moment” creations, so enjoy their beauty while it lasts, and you may remember them for a lifetime, especially if they’re one of the first bouquets you’ve received.