In a Vase, on Monday – Late Entry

I wandered about the parched yarden late this afternoon, cutting a few stems for a jar I could enter in tonight’s Ameliasburgh Garden Club meeting floral competition – the theme was ‘Rainbow Arrangement.’ As much rain as we’ve had this summer (record setting!), it’s been dry and hot the past two weeks and much of the garden is looking…tired. Even so, I snipped Dahlias, Verbena, Agastache, a Gerbera daisy and a Tithonia, Zinnias, Rudbeckia, a single snapdragon and some lovely large garlic chive flowers. And a peach Gladiola stalk.

The garden club meeting was interesting. A guest speaker, with many years experience judging flower shows, gave us tips and tricks for cutting and displaying ribbon-winning entries for the numerous fall fairs about to entertain and educate us rural residents (and visitors) over the next few weeks. Takeaways for me include:

• Bring a container of hot tap water out with you when cutting flowers in the garden;
• Make the second cut under water (ie in a bowl of warm water) so that air bubbles don’t get introduced to the flower stem; this technique was also recommended in the Ikebana demonstration last month;
• A homemade cut flower food to add to water has 2 cups of water, 3 teaspoons sugar and 2 drops of bleach;
• Cut the end of the stem on an angle – a flat cut resting on the vase bottom might create suction action, restricting water flow;
• If displaying a stalk of flowers (ie a gladiola, or snapdragon) the ideal is one third open flowers, one third opening flowers, one third closed flowers;
• Read the requirements – each fair/floral competition will publish, hopefully well in advance, the list of floral categories they are looking for – the list will be very specific – ie a branch with ornamental berries no taller than 75 cms. That means use a tape measure before bringing in your submission.

Anyway. I don’t know how my entry did tonight – everyone got to vote and they hadn’t counted the ballots by the time I had to leave. I think an e-mail will be sent out tomorrow…..

Thanks to Cathy at Rambling in the Garden for hosting this weekly, non-competitive, on-line collection of vases with cut flowers.