With the yacht season in full swing here are some useful tips to help you care for your flowers on board!
Your beautiful arrangements will need your help if they are to look their best for as long as possible. Here are my top 5 tips for getting the most of your flowers:
1. Quality
Flowers are graded for quality and although supermarket blooms may be a cheaper option you are paying for inferior quality and you can’t guarantee how long they have been sat in that bucket. Choosing a professional supplier you will receive flowers that have been selected fresh from the market and cared for correctly.
2. Hydrate:
Making sure your arrangement has a clean water supply is so important! A thirsty flower is a dead flower! Touch the oasis foam to ensure it is moist and regularly top up with fresh water carefully. Place the arrangement on a towel to soak up any spills. Misting flowers can cause more harm than good as water on the petals can cause them to rot. The exception to this are hydrangeas. A sad hydrangea can sometimes be revived by dunking the whole head in water for a couple of minutes before being placed back into a deep bucket of water.
3. Avoid Bacterial Growth
Keeping bacteria in the vase at bay will help prolong the life of your flowers.
Clean the vase every couple of days and recut the stems of the flowers each time
Remove any leaves that may be touching the water as they will start to decay causing bacteria to grow.
Add flower food to the water. If not available a teaspoon of gin and a dash of tonic is a good substitute! The gin will kill the bacteria and the sugar in the tonic will feed the flowers. You could also use a small drop of bleach but not too much or you will bleach the stems.
4. Positioning
Place your flowers away from drafts and direct sunlight. This is not always practical on a Super Yacht but be aware that drafts from air-conditioning vents and hot sunshine will shorten the life of your arrangements.
5. Gas
Keep fresh cut flowers away from fruit. Just like bananas can ripen other fruit the ethylene gas given off can cause premature wilting. A clear indication that flowers have been affected by Ethylene gas is yellowing of leaves. Ensure you remove fading blooms and petals from the arrangements as these can also cause other flowers to fan more quickly.
