There are people who recommend changing the water every day. Honestly, most customers aren't going to do that, but that's ideal. Also ideal is that the flowers should be in preservative until they are dead. That gets awfully expensive on the seller if s/he is giving out a packet of preservative with a bouquet - five or seven packets of preservative per bouquet would sure cut into my profit margin! One of my customers changes the water every day and trims stems every two days. She gets unbelievably long vase life, but I sure don't expect anybody to do all that! So you pick your recommendation from somewhere in between. Where you pick is up to you. Or tell your customers the ideal treatment and let them pick how much of it they want to do (but I still wouldn't give out more preservative).

Jeanne

Some of those packets make a quart of preservative which the customer can put the extra in an old juice bottle. They can store it labeled in their fridge. Most customers change the water once during the week. One of my customers used preservative for zinnias, and never changed the water. He said they were looking fine when I saw him at the next market.......

My preservative packets won't arrive in time for this week's market, so I'll continue telling people to change their water daily.

I tell people there is flower food in my vase water - and offer to put a little in a plastic bag around the bouquet stems. A few took me up on it.

I sold very few flowers with vases - I'm used to 1/3 to 1/2 going in vases from my yard. What is your experience?

I don't sell the vases.

Jeanne

Depends on the area where your market is located. One of our markets is on Lake Michigan right next to the marina where all the boat people have their yachts. Many of those people do want vases. In the past we have sold the metal French buckets to them. One of our other markets is in a metropolitan area. They generally don't ask about vases. They do, however, want my black plastic buckets sometimes. Did you see the thread on Cups to Go? I am going to try that when customers ask for water in a baggy (so messy), or my black buckets.

My friend has won international floral arranging awards. She has recommended adding Sprite to the water to feed the flowers rather than using flower perservative. We have high chlorine in our water and that prevents bacteria from growing. If you don't have high chlorine in your water, you can add a few drops of Chlorox. All this does the same thing that the expensive flower perservative does.

I've heard that works just fine, with Sprite or 7-Up, but haven't tried it myself. Nobody has ever given me proportions. "A splash" of 7-Up and "a few drops" of Clorox in a vase doesn't translate well to 5-gallon buckets! That, and nobody in this house drinks 7-Up or Sprite, so it's not sitting around waiting to be experimented with. There's no reason it shouldn't work, if the proportions are right, along with the Clorox as mentioned above, for people whose water isn't already bactericidal. You need an acidifier, a sugar, and a biocide (germ killer). It WOULDN'T work just as well with diet drinks, as the sugar is an important part. The acidifier is whatever makes those two drinks acidic, since they are lemon-lime flavored. Non-acidic pop wouldn't work as well. The reason some folks swear by putting an aspirin in the water is because aspirin is an acid - its name is acetylsalicylic acid. It doesn't provide any sugar or kill germs, but it may be better than nothing.

Jeanne