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Care & Handling: Work Smarter
Work Smarter, Not Harder in the Summer |
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Written by Gayle Smith
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The wonderful array of flowers available in summer is a designer’s
delight. Even the most discriminating artist finds no shortage of
texture or colour between June and September. Bulb flowers like alliums
and montbretia compete with the vibrant colours of annuals like
celosias and zinnias.
Not Harder in the Summer
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| Hard to hydrate flowers like gerberas, roses, hydrangeas, lysimachia, dahlias, bouvardia and ornamental herbs need a solution that lowers the pH and kick-starts the flow through stem cells. |
The wonderful array of flowers available in summer is a designer’s delight. Even the most discriminating artist finds no shortage of texture or colour between June and September. Bulb flowers like alliums and montbretia compete with the vibrant colours of annuals like celosias and zinnias. A non-stop summer parade of sunflowers, lilies, cosmos and foliages give consumers endless possibilities to mix and match.
Whether discussing roses or veronica, choose the best solution for care and handling to maximize performance and achieve long vase life.
A Drink Please
Let’s start with the hard to hydrate types: gerberas, roses, hydrangeas, lysimachia, dahlias, bouvardia and ornamental herbs. These flower types require solutions that lower the pH and kick-start flow through stem cells. The correct flower treatment depends on several things: What pre-treatment has the grower given? How much time do you have to process, how many solution transfers fit into your scheme of handling, and how fast do you want the flowers to open? In other words, are you looking for a “WOW” effect or anticipating having the flowers on the sales floor for two to four days before they are sold or used in arrangements?
To maximize hydration (free flow in stems) it is best to use sugarless solutions mixed with cold water.
Sugar is an important element in overall vase performance, but for wilt-sensitive flowers, giving sugar too early can impede hydration and even stimulate leaf yellowing, especially if the flowers in question arrive to you after several days of rotation and or dry shipping. If this is the case, sugar is best left out of the first hydration (or re-hydration) drink. For these “wilt sensitive” flower types, use a solution like Floralife Hydraflor or Chrysal’s Professional #1. Follow the instructions when mixing to keep the ratio of ingredients in line. Mix with cold water or pre-chill solutions a day ahead so the flowers drink, but don’t pop too fast.
Adhere to treatment times, too. It’s important to avoid selling flowers that are not properly hardened off because most consumers are experts at appreciating, but not handling flowers.
Once flowers have a long hydration drink (min. four hrs to three days), transfer blooms into a flower food: solutions with sugar! Again, mix according to instructions using cold water. Remind consumers (and colleagues) to top up as needed with fresh flower food, not tap water.
Can’t See it or Smell it, but Ethylene Gas is There
The next category are ethylene sensitive flower types. These blooms suffer premature ageing when exposed to (internal and/or external) ethylene. The group includes sweet peas, monkshood, phlox, freesia, veronica, ‘Sweet William,’ Gypsy and wax flower. And don’t forget, the entire Delphinium family (Hybrid, Volkenvrieden, Bella types and Larkspur). All ethylene sensitive flowers require a first drink at grower level of STS (silverthiosulfate). Silver molecules block ethylene receptor sites thereby preventing ethylene damage, e.g., the signs of premature senescence like floret shattering, leaf and bud abscission and/or distorted or lack of bloom opening.
Be proactive in minimizing external sources of ethylene around flowers. Good ventilation and air exchange are very important. Keep air moving so exhaust fumes trying to creep in from the car park or the street are diverted. This includes cigarette smoke pluming in the back door from employee smoking areas. I had one client who suffered damage because her store insisted on parking a meat smoker on one side of her outdoor flower display area. She suffered losses depending on how the wind blew. Keep flowers and fruits separate. Many kinds of fruits and veggies and/or rotting green bits jammed in cooler corners are easily avoided sources of ethylene.
Work Clean
How about those flowers that are beautiful, but foul the water fast like amaranthus, helenium, sunflowers, celosia, snaps, stock and zinnias. Here the big issue is maintaining bacterial control. Bacteria blocks flow in stems. It aggressively multiplies by doubling its population every 20 minutes. Controlling bacteria is all about working clean. Clean solutions, clean tools, buckets and table tops are critical. Develop a regular daily sanitation schedule as part of the shop’s opening and closing activities. Keep in mind that clean is more than a swish in bleach water. Clean means your tools and injectors are sanitized regularly with a commercial cleaner. Clean house and replace deeply scratched buckets and vases. They are impossible to properly sanitize. Always use plastic liners inside metal buckets and fill a hand sprayer with a biodegradable anti-microbial spray so it’s easy to spritz blades, knives and cutters throughout the day. Use a quat-based commercial floral cleaner and forget about rinsing these tools. In fact, cleaner residual is a good thing!
A smaller, but significant, group are flowers that love sugar! Tuberoses, glads, and protea come to mind.
These flowers actually benefit from high sugar solutions either as a sustained solution or in the case of glads, as a “pulse” treatment. Pulse treatments are given for a finite time rather than as a sustained solution. Pulsing can be as quick as 1-10 seconds or as long as overnight. Sugar gives the energy needed to open florets. In the case of protea, high sugar solutions help reduce foliage blackening. Process these flowers into vase flower food.
Finally, there is the bulbous flower group encompassing iris, eremuras, dahlias, lilies, fritillaries, alstroe and nerines to name a few. This flower group includes blooms coming from tubers, rhizomes, corms or bulbs, all of which suffer an imbalance of plant growth regulators (hormones) when flowers are harvested. It is possible to correct this situation by reintroducing PGRs using flower treatments like Bulb-T-Bags for processing and sales display. Symptoms of imbalanced PGRs appear as premature yellow foliage (lilies, alstroe) and floret stagnation (freesia, glads and iris). Colour vibrancy suffers too when PGRs get whacked-out. Think anemones, nerines and ranuculas.
Flower Foods
If you buy blooms from wholesalers who pre-process, your handling decisions are simplified: Simply decide between a display flower food or a vase solution. The difference between the two is simply the amount of sugar contained in each. Display solutions are lower sugar than vase solutions. Sugar encourages bloom opening which is not the idea when flowers are on display; therefore fill buckets with solutions like Chrysal Professional #2 or Floralife Professional and use high sugar solutions for consumer vases. Regardless of your starting point, enjoy the bounty of summer and keep those blooms drinking!
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