Home made cut flower food

20 August 2013 | Admin

Home made cut flower food recipe

I'm not a huge fan of flowers usually. My husband knows that if he's going to bring me a little gift for any reason, I'd much prefer a bar of Green and Blacks chocolate rather than flowers.

But recently we had our house of the market, and it coincided with some friends coming to stay for the weekend and bringing me flowers which I split between 3 jamjars and set on the kitchen table.

They looked so pretty. I'm not saying that's why we sold our hosue in 10 days, but it certainly helped with the overall look of the house!

So I've continued doing it. If there aren't any flowers I can use from the garden, I usually buy some cheap carnations or similar from the supermarket. However the cheaper flowers don't tend to come with any cut flower food to preserve them.

Undeterred, I found a solution online. To keep your flowers for longer:

You need to give them water
You need to give them food
Protect them from decay
Keep out of direct sunlight

I trim at least the last inch at least of my flowers at an angle - usually more as I'm popping them into a jam jar which means quite a lot of trimming.

I also strip off any leaves or foliage which will be in the water - these decay first which will accelerate decay on the rest of the flowers.

The recipe that I use for food is this:

4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon household chlorine bleach

I keep this in a jam jar and it will do 2.25 litres of water ...so just dilute according to how much water you're using. I usually make up a litre at a time to half of the flower food.

If you've got an alternative recipe, please feel free to share it!