Preserving Daffodil Blooms - By James Smyth
Article taken from NIDG Newsletter
With daffodil seasons moving forward due to global warming it is becoming more difficult to cut and show fresh blooms at the later shows. Many exhibitors use fridges to extend the shelf life of their blooms so prolonging their show season.
Fridges come in all shapes and sizes. In New Zealand they have walkin cold stores at the bottom of their gardens. Others use shop display fridges with glass sliding doors which they black out. I use a redundant domestic kitchen fridge.
There are two basic principles to extending the shelf life of blooms;
1. The blooms are best kept in the dark to stop the colours fading.
2. The blooms should be kept cold to slow down the normal ageing process.
I keep my fridge set at 2 degrees Celsius and can keep blooms in good condition for up to three weeks. When I first started I kept blooms in milk bottles three quarter full of water only to discover that the stems started to go soft at this temperature. Now I use a large vase with an inch of water in the bottom. The flowers do not need a lot of water at low temperatures in order to stay fresh. They do not mind being packed in tight but make sure that the blooms do not touch the side walls or the ice box section of the fridge. The blooms are stored when fully open at mature size ready for show. When you bring the blooms out of the fridge the ageing process becomes more rapid. They will keep up to 2 days depending on how long they have been in cold storage and the ambient temperature after they come out. When transporting cold storage blooms to a show I normally drive with the air conditioning set on cold to suit the daffodils but not me.
No greater sacrifice does any man give, than to give up his beer fridge for his daffodils.
Fridges come in all shapes and sizes. In New Zealand they have walkin cold stores at the bottom of their gardens. Others use shop display fridges with glass sliding doors which they black out. I use a redundant domestic kitchen fridge.
There are two basic principles to extending the shelf life of blooms;
1. The blooms are best kept in the dark to stop the colours fading.
2. The blooms should be kept cold to slow down the normal ageing process.
I keep my fridge set at 2 degrees Celsius and can keep blooms in good condition for up to three weeks. When I first started I kept blooms in milk bottles three quarter full of water only to discover that the stems started to go soft at this temperature. Now I use a large vase with an inch of water in the bottom. The flowers do not need a lot of water at low temperatures in order to stay fresh. They do not mind being packed in tight but make sure that the blooms do not touch the side walls or the ice box section of the fridge. The blooms are stored when fully open at mature size ready for show. When you bring the blooms out of the fridge the ageing process becomes more rapid. They will keep up to 2 days depending on how long they have been in cold storage and the ambient temperature after they come out. When transporting cold storage blooms to a show I normally drive with the air conditioning set on cold to suit the daffodils but not me.
No greater sacrifice does any man give, than to give up his beer fridge for his daffodils.