Sprucing Up the Plants in Your House
Some plants will keep the green for many months with little or no water. They’re the exception rather than the rule. For the most part, if you want to make your plants green, keep them green, and see that green flourish over the long-term, it will require a little effort. The thing is, not everybody is born with a green thumb. What’s the solution?
Well, you want to do a little research as you no doubt have begun to do; how else would you have found your way to this piece of writing? So to that end, this blog is here to help you keep your plants healthy and happy. Following we’ll explore a few tips so flowers stay fresh—but much of what is written here will apply to general houseplants as well.
- For Flowers, There Should Be a Snip When They Come Home
If you’re bringing a flower arrangement home that is already full-grown, you definitely want to snip the stems on the bottom. This will help them absorb water and remain in flower longer. Essentially, you’re “opening up” the stem’s ability to “ingest” how often to water roses. You don’t need to snip a lot, just a half-inch or less, depending on how the stems look when you bring the flowers home.
There are all manner of tips and tricks that can help your store-bought pre-arranged flowers remain fresh. Another example of a good tip is keeping plants near light. You don’t want to bake them into a crisp, but they tend to do better in a cool, light-filled environment.
- Flowers You Grow Yourself May Benefit From “Ice Watering”
Flowers are especially sensitive to temperature changes. Ones you get from the store will do better in room temperature water—they don’t like it hot. Some flowers that bloom at cold times during the year prefer water to be a little less than room temperature. If you’re growing bulbs from a pot, you can put a few ice cubes at the base of the flower’s stem for slow watering.
Look up the best practices on each plant, but ice cubes melt slowly, and the water has to trickle down through soil to the roots. So with some plants, a handful of ice around the stem of the flower represents a great way to get a lot of water to the plant without drowning it—more on drowning plants shortly.
- Be Sure You Change the Water on Cut Flowers
Flowers need clean water that nourishes them, and over time, without proper cleaning, water does tend to become less conducive to cut plants. Certainly, there are some notable benefits of keeping flowers in the house. But those benefits begin to wane as flowers droop. There’s nothing more beautiful than flourishing flowers, and nothing sadder than those that wilt.
So what you want to do is assure you switch out the water on your cut flowers every couple days. Doing it daily isn’t a bad idea either, just be gentle as you go about it and talk nicely to the plants. Seriously, speak sweetly to them; it helps them in strange ways. Speak harshly, and they don’t do as well. The exact mechanism behind this isn’t precisely known.
- Food For Flowers—One Excellent Trick
Just as people do well from proper nourishment, so do flowers. There is a sort of “plant food” you can give them for best results. Basically use just a few drops of bleach and a clear alcohol with a low alcohol content—vodka is usually around eighty “proof”, that will work. Use just a few drops of either. This is to kill bacteria that can grow in water and inhibit plant health.
Also, add a few drops of superfine sugar—powdered—and soda. This feeds flowers. Lastly, take a vitamin C tablet, crush it up, and add it in. Doing so will lower pH. You can explore a more detailed exploration into plant food at this site.
- Don’t Over-Water Potted Flowers or Other Plants
It can be tempting to inundate potted flowers with water daily, but don’t do that. One, you need to have some way for water to drain out the bottom of the plant’s pot in place. Two, overwatering can actually “choke” the plant, inhibiting growth. To avoid this, just water once every couple days. Check the soil. If it’s still almost muddy, wait a bit.
Helping Indoor Flower Arrangements and Potted Plants Flourish
Don’t overwater plants, consider putting “flower food” in the vase of cut flowers, don’t neglect to change the water of those floral arrangements as a means of keeping the plants most nourished while diminishing bacterial growth, think about ice watering for potted cold-bulb flowers, and snip cut flowers at the stem when they come home.
These tips should help keep your floral arrangements fresh longer. So sure, maybe you don’t have a green thumb—but the more you carefully maintain your plants, the better you’ll get at it. Eventually, you may be surprised to see how long you can keep flowers flourishing.
