PRESERVING CUT ROSES & FLOWERS

So you come home with a bouquet of cut flowers from the supermarket or wherever. Maybe you cut the stems, maybe you don’t, then fill the vase with warm water, an aspirin for old times sake, and the flowers are on their own. Trouble is flowers don’t get headaches and the tap water is bad for flowers. So, what happens? The flowers look like tombstones in a week or so, roses seldom making it past day number six.

What’s wrong? Is the supermarket brandishing yukky flowers or it is the way you’re shepherding them? By now you know the truth: it’s how both of us manage to kill flowers before their time. Now, it’s time to turn things around and manage the flowers with a touch of genius.

First, let us suggest some reading material used by florists, but easily understood by novice and dedicated gardeners alike. The book you’ll love to read is "Cut Flowers" by John N. Sacalis, published by Ball Publishing, P.O. Box 9, Batavia, IL. 60510-0009. I believe the retail price is around $9. The book gives basic information on how to prolong the life and quality of fresh cut flowers. Sacalis is a professor of horticulure at Rutgers University and owned a retail florist shop before joining the academic teaching profession years ago. He’s a perfectionist, so you’ll get perfection keeping cut flowers alive.

A second publication long since out-of-print is "How To Make Cut Flowers Last" by Victoria Kasperski. Published in 1957, the book profiles the basics on keeping cut flowers going from African violets to Yucca. The only place where you’ll possibly find the book is in used book stores, retailing less than $5. When you next pass a used bookstore and have nothing to do, check out their second-hand books. You may be lucky!

With roses, Sacalis’ book gives basic hints for rose aficionados, but of greater interest is the section devoted to retail handling (florist) of cut flowers. Some of the fine points:

• Cut healthy roses in late morning when the sugar (glucose) content of blossoms is the highest. Decades and decades ago, the so-called gospel was to cut roses in late afternoon because it was theorized that the flowers had the highest level of sugar before the sun set. Not so! We now know the highest sugar levels in roses of all kinds is in mid-to-late morning; after all, it takes time for sugar to rise from the roots after sunrise and to reach maximum levels in roses. It doesn’t matter whether rose buds are tight or if they are in the early stages of opening. The idea is to capture roses when they seem to be swimming in sugar.
• On cutting roses outdoors, place them in a bucket of warm water. Prune with reasonably long stems because there’s sugar in the tissue there. Remember, even after cutting roses, you must go back above a branch (shoot) with five healthy leaves. This shoot is the "eye" of the rose, meaning that another long-stem rose will develop from this point if you have pruned the stem back above this five-leaf branch. If you don’t prune back this far, there won’t be a replacement rose as you expect.
• Once indoors, recut all stems, placing them in warm water again. It is well to remember that the time between cutting the rose outdoors and placing the stems in water should be minimal. Unless immersed in water, stems absorb oxygen . Air causes air plugs or embolisms inside stems, this disrupting the flow of nutrients inside cut flowers.

There are two stages to preserving roses. The first stage calls for using distilled or soft water because it contains very little salts. Both sources of water will adjust to the proper pH level in the least amount of time. Use only a half-pint (8 ounces) of water for this initial solution. Use your electronic soil pH tester to check water pH. Ideal water temperature is around 100 F. Having obtained a pH reading of the water, start adding small amounts of concentrated lemon juice to lower the pH to 3. When the pH registers 3, stop adding lemon juice.

Roses are best processed in cool air temperatures, generally between 32 and 35 degrees. The refrigerator is perfect for this. Transfer cut roses from the plain-water container (which you used outdoors when you cut the roses) to the solution containing the pH of 3. Place this container in the refrigerator. Stemmed roses should stay in the solution for an hour or more until leaves and rose petals become crisp and turgid. Once roses look fresh, remove them from the fridge and transfer them to the second preservative stage. You may think it’s complex, but it isn’t.

Once roses have been enriched with the acid water, they should be immersed in a preservative, commercial or homemade. Nurseries generally carry several commercial preservatives, including Flower Life, Floralife, Oasis, PetalGard and others. You can make your own by adding clear Karo syrup to water. Here, the pH should be increased to 3.5. Water temperature should be between 105 and 110 degree F. Keep roses away from strong sunlight. Change the solution every three days. Roses could last 7-10 days in the home.

Among the cut flowers profiled in Sacalis’ book are anemone, astilbe, cattleya orchids, dahlia, delphinium, dianthus, freesia, gladiola, iris, lilac, narcissus, peony, and tulips. Process these cut flowers as with roses, but without refrigeration.

When you buy cut flowers at the supermarket, set them on the floor of the car so they are shaded from sunlight. On arriving home, cut the stems and place the flowers temporarily in a bucket of hot water. For displaying in the home, use a decorative vase, add a pint of hot water, then one or two teaspoons of clear Karo syrup. Place stemmed flowers in the solution, away from direct sunlight. When you retire at night, move the vase to the floor of a cool room. The next morning, retrieve the vase and display it appropriately in the home.