You always want your flowers to last longer. You want your flower arrangements to look as beautiful as possible without losing their freshness and scent.

It takes 5 minutes or less to ensure your flowers’ freshness remains for as long as possible, but first, there are a few things you need to understand about a flower before going into the process of preparing flower food.

Before a flower is cut from the plant itself, it gets all it nourishment from the plant. This allows it to grow and develop further. However, when it is cut off from the plant, its source of nourishment is cut off too. The main purpose of flower food is to take the place of the plant and provide the flower with the nourishment it needs.

Aspirin

Believe it or not, Aspirin has more uses than those that are medically documented! For example, Aspirin is a flower food ingredient that I use for my arrangements. Why? Because Aspirin contains salicyclic acid. Plants naturally produce salicyclic acid to enhance growth and development. Aspirin acts as a substituting agent for flowers after they are cut off from the plant.

Sugar

Sugar, on the other hand, lowers the bacteria count in the water and acts as a source of food for the flowers. You do need to be careful, though, because sugar isn’t recommended for all plants indiscriminately. Here’s a list of flowers to avoid using sugar with:

• – Daffodils
• – Marguerite
• – Daisies
• – Tulips.

How To Use Sugar:

It’s very simple. All you need to do is dissolve a tablespoon of sugar in a quart or 4 cups of lukewarm water.

How to Store Your Flowers

I normally get my flowers from the florist at night. Before I use the flowers in the morning, I keep them in a dark or dimly lit room with good ventilation.

In 3 steps, here’s what I do as soon as I get home from the flower vendor:

• – Fill containers with water,
• – Add flower food, and
• – Store my flowers.

Summary

A combination of sugar and other ingredients often prolongs the freshness of flowers. I use sugar and aspirin. Fill the containers with one quart or slightly more of lukewarm water. Then dissolve aspirin and add 1 tablespoon of sugar. Dissolve the sugar & aspirin then place your flowers in the container.

Doing this makes your flowers last so much longer then you would expect. I generally manage to keep my filler flowers for at one week longer.

Note. Do remember to change the water every day!