Conditioning

I've never figured out why this subject stumps some wonderful rosarians; conditioning is so easy, and it doubles the life of rose blooms.

Preservatives

Most florists staple a small soft plastic bag of preservatives to the material they wrap your flowers in.  Use them; they work.  When you have roses of your own, you can prepare your own effective preservatives.  To one quart of lukewarm water, add one teaspoon of sugar and a few drops of household bleach.  The sucrose will continue to feed the bloom for development now that it's off the bush, and the bleach will kill bacteria.  This homemade concoction will work about as well as anything commercially available.

Before you cut, mix preservatives with 105-degree water in the container where you'll put the blooms.  Newly cut roses quickly absorb preservatives if there's a good drink of lukewarm water to go with them.

Don't take the container of water to the garden with you when you go to cut.  All you will do is compress blooms and slosh water on your feet.  If cut at the right time, roses will do perfectly nicely for at least an hour without water.  It's what you do after you cut that matters most.

Wicker baskets are nice carriers if they're long enough for the stem length you'll be getting.  At Garden Valley Ranch we use 2-foot-by-3-foot laundry baskets that are only 9 inches deep; we can stack a lot of roses in them without crushing the roses.

Foliage removal is necessary to a point.  Several people have made me a gift of tongs for foliar removal with instructions to press them against stems and pull downward to remove thorns and foliage.  I thank them for the gift and put it away.

Foliage and thorns are so easy to snap or cut off that there's no need for a device to yank them off.  If the roses aren't going to be handled, as when blooms are put into clear bud vases, leave the thorns.  They're dramatic to look at, especially under water.

Foliage is another matter.  I don't like looking at it under water.  Even if it doesn't show, rose foliage becomes a tangled mess at the bottom of a container.  This is particularly true if you arrange roses with other flowers or foliage.  Remove lower leaves whether they will show or not.

Cutting stems under water is the single most important step for extending bloom life for all flowers, not just roses.  When stems are cut from their bushes, they draw in air and begin to make pockets which, when they reach the bloom, cause the blossom to nod in premature death.  When you recut the stems under water, they draw no air, and the water acts as a temporary sealant when stems are later moved around out of water.

Garden roses have thick pithy stems compared to the fragile ones of greenhouse roses.  Cutting stems under water and using preservatives give garden roses the boost they need to fully mature.

You don't need a large container for cutting stems under water.  A small bowl or saucer will do just fine.  Dip the end of the stem in the water, cut one-quarter inch off at an angle, and place the stem in a container of lukewarm water with preservatives added.

Keeping roses the maximum period requires one more step, which is really a repetition of the one you have just learned.  If you change a rose's water every day, recut its stem, and add fresh preservatives, it will reciprocate by lasting longer than you ever thought possible.  If you haven't time to do it all, at least keep ample water in the container.  Roses drink an incredible amount, and remember that they're continuing to grow because of the sugars in the preservatives.  You'll be convinced when you see a bud develop into a bloom the size of a dinner plate.

There's a bud vase I'm particularly fond of because it suits my lazy ways.  It's meant to hold only one rose and is bulb-shaped at the bottom, so that the rose always has ample water, even if I forget to refill it.  I don't pretend that roses put in this practical container will last as long as those whose stems are recut every day, but if I haven't the time to do it or have so many rose that I can't keep track, it's a welcome helper.

Hardening is another florist's term.  It means that all parts of a flower, from stem to petals, have hardened to the point of maximum water retention.  Flowers can take the most shock when they've been hardened.

If you need your roses right away, go ahead and use them anytime after you've cut their stems under water and put them into lukewarm water.  If you have the time or want maximum bloom life, leave them in the container with the preservatives and put the container in a cool dark spot.  Ground-floor closets are ideal.  By the time the water reaches room temperature, the blooms will be turgid.  You'll be happy you did this as the days go by and by and your blooms last and last.

Transporting roses should include keeping them in water.  Once I begin hardening a cut bloom, I like to keep it in water until it was found a home.  Plastic floral buckets are nice for transporting a good number of roses.  For fewer blooms, wax-coated milk and juice containers can be transported in a carrier I'll tell you about.  Its base is a round of wood onto which some number of coffee cans are secured, along with a handle made from leftover pipe lengths.  Wax containers can be set within the empty coffee cans and won't spill over.

Larger containers can be transported easily with the help of sand-bags.  A friend of mine made sandbags for us from denim remnants; we filled them with pea gravel.  They'll secure a container of any size or shape in even the most awkward corner of your vehicle.