There’s something so grown up and adult about having fresh flowers in the house, I just love how they brighten any room and will always try to pick up a bunch with my weekly shop.
Tulips are by far my favourite flower, I love their simplicity and the different colours they come in. You could buy a new bunch every week and never repeat the same colours.
My only problem with them is that they wilt, almost as soon as I put them in the vase they start to droop until they’re practically upside down and all the petals fall off. I thought I was doing something wrong until a few people reached out with suggestions of how to prevent it and I decided to look into it a bit more.
It turns out that the reason they wilt in the first place is due to air bubbles rising up the stem from the water, these bubbles block water from reaching the flower head and so they start to die, slowly and the first sign of this is the wilted stems.
This is what a bunch of my tulips looked like after three days at home, pretty pathetic and it got even worse than this before they gave up and died…
A coupe of suggestions I was given online was to put a penny in the bottom of the vase before adding water or to put a small tea spoon in the vase. I’m not sure how or why these tactics would work, it might be something in the metal but the spoon trick didn’t work for me although I think my flowers were probably too far gone by the time I tried it.
What has worked though is:
- a diagonal cut 1cm from the bottom of the stem
- using a safety pin, push the needle through the stem about 1cm from the base of the flower head
The hole in the stem isn’t even noticeable but it allows any air bubbles that rise in the stem to be released ensuring that the water makes it all the way up to the petals.
Well, guess what…it works.
Here are my new flowers; day three at home and still standing tall…
I’m definitely going to be doing this will every bunch of tulips I buy in the future because it helps them to last so much longer and they look healthier too.
Hope you’ve found this helpful, if you have any tips for making fresh flowers last longer please leave them in the comments.
Rachel xx
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