Harvest Cut Flowers for Best Vase Life and More Flowers

It’s so much fun to harvest cut flowers and bring them inside to make pretty arrangements! There are several factors that affect the vase life of your flowers once they’ve been cut. And you can harvest in a way that helps your plants produce more cutting flowers. Be sure to follow these instructions and you’ll be much happier with your flower growing efforts.

You can expect your flowers to last a good week or more in the vase. Some flowers last longer, like Alstroemerias, which easily last 2 weeks. The flowers I include in my website are all good for cutting mainly because of their good vase life. If not, I mention that.

Plus, I have a good homemade cut flower food recipe at the end.

When to harvest your cut flowers

The best time to harvest is in the early morning. The second best is in the evening. This is because the pressure of heat and sunlight are off the plant and the flowers are better hydrated. Morning is best because the flowers have had overnight to drink up their water and nutrients.

How open should the flower be before you cut it? That varies slightly from flower to flower. But in general, harvest before the flower is fully open, and it’s best before pollen is showing. You can look at the anthers, the flower part that will open and release pollen, and cut before it’s open and releasing. I give any special instructions with each flower when needed.

How to cut your flowers so they continue to produce more flowers, and look nice

Cut the flowers at an angle

First of all, cut your flowers at an angle so to create more surface area for them to take up water. And this way they won’t sit flush with your bucket bottom and get blocked.

When you cut your flower, cut it at a node that will produce another set of flowers

This will vary with the type of flower. For many, choose a node that has buds but no flower buds yet. If the node has a flower bud then the stem will not get longer. In that case you’d want to cut to the next lower node. Find one that has evidence of a new growth bud. This enables the plant to grow two more flowers for you with normal length stems. Sunflowers are a very clear example of this process.

You don’t have to keep the whole long stem you can shorten it and cut off short side shoots before placing the stem in water.

If you simply cut where you want it and leave a stub sticking up, it’s not pretty and it drains energy away from the plant’s production efforts. For most flowers, when the cut is lower, more of the plant’s energy goes into more flowers with longer, thicker, stronger stems. Which is what you want. So please, no stubs!

Some flowers won’t work this way, like Alstromerias. Each of my flower descriptions will explain how to harvest them.

It’s like an advanced form of deadheading and it’s important for flower production

One reason we deadhead flowers is to maintain a nice appearance. The other reason we deadhead  is to prevent the plant from starting to produce seeds. When the plant starts producing seeds it sends a signal throughout that success in procreation has been achieved and flowering can slow down. But we want many flowers so we want to keep the flowers harvested.

If you don’t harvest all your flowers for bouquets, try to keep up with deadheading them so you can maintain good flower production. But always cut at the lowest node to produce more flowers with good, long stems.

That means that you may need to cut flowers and add them to the compost pile. That can be a bit of extra work but when you have fewer plants in a home garden, maximizing production is what you need.

What if you’re going on vacation? Well, all my advice is for optimizing production, so you can let it go a bit and not worry. Catch up when you return. We always need to enjoy a vacation!

Put the cut flowers into a clean bucket of water

It’s best to carry a bucket of water out to the garden to get the flowers right into. I had originally learned that warm water was best to let the flower drink up. I rarely do that now, though, and I think cool water is just fine.

The bucket and all water vessels and vases must be super clean to prevent dirt and bacteria from growing on the cut stems and clogging them. I use buckets that have a new, smooth finish inside and set them apart solely for flower gathering use. I scrub with a clean sponge and sometimes with bleach.

When cutting your flowers strip the lower foliage off the stem to keep it from rotting in the water. Some leaves I pull off, but cutting makes a cleaner surface and reduces the number of broken cells.

Bring the flowers into a cool dark place as soon as you’re done harvesting to start conditioning.

Condition flowers before you arrange them

Next step is to place your bucket of flowers in a cool, darkish spot so they can hydrate for 8 hours. This conditions them and adds vase life. Flower farmers often have refrigerators to condition their flowers. I never have, I’ve always put them in a dark room or shady shed.

Then you can arrange them! When you make your bouquets, you’ll make a final cut to all the stems. Try to cut them at an angle again if you can. If you end up with a flower that wilts, you can take it out and recut it at an angle.

I build my bouquets in my hand. When I’m done I then cut a few of the stems at a time, at an angle.

Next put them into your pretty vases, pitchers, plain old jars, etc. to add your garden’s beauty to your home. Be sure all vessels are clean.

Maintain your bouquets to keep them looking good

A few tips to maintaining your flower bouquets to increase vase life:

• Keep them in a cool place and out of the sun
• Change the water every few days, recut the stems if they go limp,
• Use flower food, it provides sugar for the flowers, and bleach and acid to prevent bacterial growth, which can clog the water uptake vessels in the stems.

Recipe for a homemade cut flower food

I used to use food when I was selling flowers because the flowers would be spending too much time out of water and I wanted the buyers to have the longest life from my flowers. At home where I have and constant supply of flowers, I don’t bother with this. But I do if I’m giving my flowers away. Here is the recipe I used for it if you want to use it:

• 1qt. water
• 2 Tbs. lemon juice
• 1 Tbs. sugar
• ½ tsp. bleach

You can use this recipe in your harvesting water, and in your vases. Multiply it if you need more volume, it is to be used straight, as is.

The recipe comes from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s article on cut flower care. Here’s what they say:

Using a preservative definitely increases the longevity of cut flowers. To survive, flowers need three ingredients: carbohydrates, biocides, and acidifiers. Carbohydrates are necessary for cell metabolism; biocides combat bacteria and are necessary for maintaining plant health; acidifiers adjust the pH of water to facilitate and increase water uptake.

By Rose Edinger

An acquaintance once told me that when company comes, if you have fresh flowers, they never seem to notice how dirty the house is.

Enjoy your flowers!

Further Reading

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