Watched a 20-year florist cut stems underwater and my jaw hit the floor

I have been arranging flowers for about 5 years now. Last month I was helping out at a bigger shop downtown for a wedding order. This older florist named Carol was showing me how she preps hydrangeas. I always just snipped stems and threw them in water. She showed me that cutting them at a sharp angle while they're submerged stops air from getting in the stem. I had been wondering why my hydrangeas looked droopy by day 2 every single time. That one trick kept the wedding centerpieces looking fresh for almost 6 days instead of 2. Has anyone else been doing some basic thing wrong for years then saw someone do it right? I felt like an idiot but I also learned more in 10 seconds than in 5 years.

2 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

2 Comments

alicea265mo ago

Honestly that hydrangea trick blew my mind too when I first saw it. @ray_carr that thing about vinegar and rusty bolts is smart, its wild how much time we waste doing stuff the hard way. I think the whole cutting stems underwater thing works for most flowers not just hydrangeas because the air bubbles mess up the water flow up the stem. Its like when you drink from a straw with a hole in it you get nothing. Same logic applies to flowers if you let air in they cant drink right. Carol probably figured that out from years of trial and error while the rest of us just accepted droopy flowers as normal. Little stuff like that makes me wonder what other basic tricks Im missing out on.

5

ray_carr5mo ago

Picked up a trick from a welder friend about soaking rusty bolts in vinegar and it changed my whole approach.

4