Kat,
I'm confused. When you said, but the folks at Floralife are so much nicer. Does this mean you called the manufacturers? That's how I read it. Anyhow, no. All the products are not the same.

Our wholesale supply house carries all the brands. We've used Floralife and Chrysal. The hydrating solution we use is Chrysal OVB. The reason: we deal with a tremendous amount of humidity during the summer. Hair curling humidity. Awful humidity. You get the picture. So, anyway we harvest all our cuts into Chrysal OVB hydrating solution. All flowers except zinnias. Zinnias are cut into plain water. The nice thing about the OVB solution is that flowers can be cut the day before market, put into OVB, and go to market the following day without switching out. With Floralife Hydraflor 100, we can't leave the flowers in the solution for that length of time. So, anyway that is one reason we are committed to Chrysal OVB.

When we make our bouquets the afternoon before market, they're put into Chrysal Professional 2 solution. It's a holding/processing solution. If we have to cut lilies and other specialty flowers early, they're put in Professional 2, and held in the cooler. This solution is not a preservative. It suspends the natural senesce of the flowers.

Preservative packets are given with every bouquet purchase at market. Sometimes it's Chrysal packets. And, sometimes it's Floralife. And, that pretty much depends what is on special when we make this purchase. Both Chrysal and Floralife have packets of preservative for flowers from bulb crops.

We have not used Vitaproducts. According to the manufacturers, you can skip cleaning buckets. I don't know about that. Sunday afternoon is bucket cleaning here on our farm. It's our date with bleach. We're just not that much into changing that which works for us.

Hope this info helps.

Trish

Thanks as always, Trish. Yes I spoke to the folks at both Floralife and at Chrysal and found the Chrysal cust. service rep to be very brusque and disinterested in me and the Floralife rep treated me really well. Maybe I just caught the Chrysal woman on a bad day. However, it sounds to me like the Chrysal OVB and the Professional 2 are going to be the right stuff. I still have many Floralife packets left from last year, do they keep?

Thanks again. Kat

Kat,
Yes, the packets keep. In fact, we have a box and a half left from last season. If I'm not mistaken, we have a couple bottles each of Chrysal OVB and Professional #2. We don't leave them upstairs in our little barn where we store other market related items. We bring them inside and they're stored in an unheated closet in our office.

BTW Do you have humidity in your region?

Trish

Trish,

Humidity is not really an issue here during the spring summer season, unless we have a particularly rainy period. Our summers can be a bit brutal with temps in the upper 90's for weeks on end.
Kat

Trish,
Do you use ethylblock?

Trish,
I have too much humidity in the summer and my Zinnias shut down at the outdoor market we sell at because of the heat and humidity. What product do you use and would ethylblock be helpfull in this situation. My inlaws have an ice cream stand and they have an ice machine I was thinking of adding this to the zinnias to keep the stems from getting "mushy". Last year I used vita one step and really
liked the product except for when the temps rose above 90 degrees then the zinnias shut down almost every time witht the Vita or not. The primary reason I use vita is because the lower sugar in the solution wont burn the Zinnias.

Thanks
Ed

Jennifer, No. We don't use any type of ethylblock. Just the products I mentioned in my previous post.

Hi Ed. New poster? And, welcome to the Cutting Garden.

I see your problem. Vita-One-Step contains a hydrating solution. Zinnias can only tolerate 1-4 hours in a hydrating solution. If it has been raining, they don't need any hydrating because--well--they are already hydrated. Hydrating solutions will burn the zinnias. We've found the best way for us is to pick zinnias into plain water. Also, you may want to have the pH tested in your water. If you are going to use a hydrating solution, Chrysal OVB is the one to use.

Secondly, the reason we use Chrysal Professional 2 holding/processing solution is that it contains no sugar. As you already know, zinnias don't like sugar.

Finally, we've also found that zinnias kept in a cooler below 40 degrees are not happy campers.

Trish