The last four years I’ve been lucky enough to have grown and designed all of my flowers off of well water that had the perfect pH and minerals for great vase life in cut flowers.
This past fall, we moved and our current location does not offer the same benefit. We are on a cistern system that is fed from a hand dug well (that’s just under 30 feet deep) the water to the house needs to go through a UV filter and softener (with special pellets that help prevent iron buildup). I have never known much about water treatments, but boy am I learned about it this year.
I’m not crazy about using water treatments, but when it comes to drinking water and washing my hair, I definitely prefer them over not treating the water. But noticing such a big difference it had me wondering how vase life in flowers would be impacted by the water and I wanted to make sure I knew exactly how flowers would do before wedding season starts.
I started off with 6 white roses (imported – I don’t have the luxury of having everything I need to grow roses in February quite yet) each in a different type of water.
Samples Included
- Distilled water
- Distilled water with flower food
- Tap water (treated with water softener and UV filter)
- Tap water with flower food
- Spicket water (untreated, straight from the cistern)
- Spieket water with flower food
I left them in the water without topping it off for a week and fully expected the spicket water to cloud up or have sediment at the bottom of the water vessel and the distilled water to do the best.
And I was wrong, so I’m really happy that I tested the water.
The first of the flowers to wither were the ones in distilled water.
B, the stem with flower food, had a little bit more structure than A, the stem in plain distilled water, but neither of them held up.
The next to go were those that were in the tap water that had been treated with the water softener. How a water softener works, I start it essential replaces the calcium and magnesium in the water with sodium. The sodium can interfere with the flower’s ability to take in water and can create cellular imbalance that leads to accelerated wilting.
The rose in D, the tap water with flower food, did far worse than the stem that was in plain tap water. I haven’t done any formal testing, but my gut is telling me that I had some bad chemistry between the flower food and treated water. The flower food adds acidity and sugar to the water and that mixed with higher sodium will create stress in flowers and can prevent water uptake.
The flower that did the best, and lasted 3 more days in the vase, was F, the stem that was in spicket water with added flower food.
The water here tests out very hard on the test strips and has a balanced pH. It’s high in iron and calcium, and even though it doesn’t taste like dirt you can feel the sediment on your teeth after drinking it.
While the calcium building up on your skin in the shower is a total nightmare, it’s actually a good thing for your cut flowers.
It helps strengthen cell walls, stabilizes membranes, and, specifically for roses, helps prevent stem necks from bending. For flowers, it’s stable.
Adding the flower food to mineral rich water will lower the pH a little bit, add sugars for food, and has a biocide in it which will help control bacteria.
I almost always prefer chemical-free, but when it comes to floral design, sometimes it’s necessary to ensure preservation for flowers when they are being used for weddings. When used properly, flower food is far less toxic than most household cleaners and is safe unless ingested.
So, moral of the story, if you’re a florist and moving somewhere with different water, it definitely pays to do a water test or sample run to make sure you have good water to get the most vase life out of your flowers.
For people enjoying their flowers at home, just use the tap water, or untreated water if you have reverse osmosis or a softener. If you want to extend vase life, use the flower food that comes with your flowers or just go for the plain water. I get asked a lot about the penny trick or using vodka or sprite, and out o fall of those, plain water will work the best but the penny won’t hurt if you still want to toss that in there.
