Cut right. Live longer.

As well as the slash and burn of clearing beds this week, I have been harvesting flowers. I have, for the first time for a while, not been leaving flowers to set seed for harvest. I have not been selling them as flowers, nor have I been cutting for styling or for photography. I have been bringing flowers into the house just for me.

I made a hand tie. There was a muscle memory in spiralling the stems and for a moment, I lost myself. I made a little pot of phlox, sweet peas and bronze fennel and I put it on the little windowsill on the stairs. There is a bucket of larkspur, rescued before the big clear last Wednesday, shedding petals in the most glorious way in the boot room. The sweet peas were already old when I arranged them, and they shattered as soon as I looked at them. I thought, just maybe, I would remind myself of the rules.

Break the rules if you wish. I do, with depressing regularity, but then I don’t mind petals shedding all over the table. However, you will find that the flowers just don’t last as long and if you want them to last days and not hours, these tips will help.

Wash your buckets

Cut into water always, and make sure the water is sparkling clean. This generally means a clean bucket too. Rule of thumb is if you wouldn’t drink out of it, you shouldn’t be putting flowers into it. I might not go quite that far, but you get the principle. Lots of proper florists use bleach in their buckets to make sure that bacteria do not breed (it is this that causes the flowers to go over) but I don’t. I’m not a believer in bleach unless you are in hospital. Just scrub the bucket. This is made a lot easier if you keep on top of this and you don’t let the buckets gather dust or dirt over time. And never ever ever use them for weeding.

Also, as ever, do as I say, not as I do.

Get up early

Another do as I say… The earlier you cut in the day, the fresher the flowers stay. Once the sun is warming the back of your neck, it is too late. If this is too much, late evening is the only other time. (It really is second best though, the plants sitting overnight in the moister air means that there is more hydration in the flower. Doing it in the evening means that they have gone through the whole day.) However, evening harvesting does have the added bonus that you can do it with a glass of wine without eyebrows being raised.

Cut at the right stage of maturity

Cut too young and they will flop. Not enough of the chemical that stiffens the stem and the growth is too soft. If you cut at the moment that the flower is fully out on the plant, you won’t get long out of them in the house. I make this mistake with nigella all the time. I wait until it looks absolutely perfect in the field, think that I must have it in the house, and then it shatters by the time I’ve found the right jug for it. Ditto roses. And sunflowers now I come to think about it.

Aim for the just coming out moment, just being able to see colour stage.

Sharp snips

Children pick flowers by snapping and pulling. Fine if you want a daisy chain but not good for much else. Blunt scissors crush rather than cut the stem which means they don’t take up the water in the same way. Go for a clean, diagonal cut and then plunge straight into water. Cut just above another bud or a node to encourage further flowering.

Keep your snips clean and sharp. Never ever use them for cutting wire, ribbon, or mats out of dogs’ trousers.

Drink deep

Once the flowers are in the bucket, put it somewhere cool and dark. Easier said than done in this weather, but wherever you can. A few hours is good, twelve is better. Imagine those expensive moisturiser adverts; you are aiming for the flowers to suck up all that water and be plump, pert and hydrated.

Searing honesty

If I am cutting just for me, I don’t. If I am cutting for an event or a gift, I do. Just boil the kettle, pour boiling hot water into a measuring jug up to an inch or so, and hold the freshly cut stems in for about ten seconds. The length of time you need depends on the material you are dipping; woody stems (lilac, shrubby greens etc) take a while. Soft stems (bluebells particularly) no time at all. There are some flowers that this makes minimal difference on, and some that it is dramatic. Poppies and bluebells for example, are absolute non-starters as cut flowers unless you sear, and absolutely magical if you do. If nothing else, you will feel like you know what you are doing if you sear.

Oh, and absolutely no foliage under the water. I once went to a wedding and the florist hadn’t stripped the stems. By the time we were on champagne and speeches, the water was bright green and the flowers looked like they’d been poisoned. Which I suppose they had. I also gave myself champagne poisoning that night, but that’s another story.

Keep out of strong sunlight

As tempting as it is to have your flowers on a windowsill, put them on the kitchen table instead, or by your bed. Aim for cool, still air if you can, as this minimises the flowers being dried out by heat of draughts.

Changes

Fresh water, every day. I know, such a faff but you know a cheat’s way? Put the vase in the kitchen sink and the tap on. The clean water will drive out the old without ever exposing the cut stems to air. However, if you are a few days in, it is probably worth getting them all out and checking that no foliage has fallen in and none of the stems are rotting. Whipping out any of the going over flowers promptly can keep the rest going for much longer.

Flowers do drink much fast than you imagine and if you have a big arrangement in a trendily dinky hand-thrown ceramic shallow bowl, as is the mode de jour, they are going to run out of water quicker than you think. I cannot be the only one who has been appalled at how fast flowers have gone over and then realised that the jug I shoved them into is bone dry.

If this does happen, re-cut, re-sear, and plunge into water in a cool place again.

Once you know these things, you will start to twitch if you ever see bare stems out of water. You are literally watching flowers drying and dying. Don’t throw away any jam jars because if you are giving flowers to friends or arriving at dinner parties with a bouquet you will need to take them in water. None of us who have taken the trouble to grow, cut and condition glorious flowers can concentrate on an aperitif if the host is too busy and too stressed to find a vase for our beautiful creation. Preserve the friendship and the success of the social event, and take your own water.