It is worth paying a bit of attention to preparing, or in official floristry terms "conditioning", cut flowers for their life in the vase. This is a picture of last week's bunch of wallflowers (Erysimum) which I didn't photograph until after I had written last week's blog as it had wilted a bit. Splitting the stems and letting them soak up warm water for a night most certainly did the trick. They have been gracing the bar for the latter part of the week and are still going strong. Although I also have got some more traditional yellow and orange wallflowers, I picked these two wonderfully bi-coloured ones especially for their crepe paper-like appearance.

Now for this week's bunch. Toddler and myself headed for the allotment early this morning, where we did sow some seeds. We sowed vegetables, but also some of my own saved oriental poppy and cornflower seed.  Even though I had prepared the seedbed the day before, with her "help" it obviously took a lot longer. You can probably imagine my numerous "No, don't put the stones that I just picked off the row back on it.", "Please don't walk over the raked bed." "Stop, that's where we've just sown," and so on. Needless to say that the seeds that I put in her hand ended up everywhere apart from in the designated seedbed, but who cares. We had fun and the advantage of saving your own seed is that you can afford to waste a bit. 

When we went home we took these with us: wallflowers as well as Euphorbia oblongata. 

I split the stems of the wall flowers when I cut them and I put all flowers immediately in water in an empty plastic milk bottle that I brought along for this purpose.  At home I combined all of these with with some cream-coloured tulips which appeared in my supposedly blue and pink border. Considering the pattern that they are emerging in I must have consciously planted these but why defeats me. While they have received a different designation, I have made a picture of the bed so in the summer I can take the bulbs out. 

There is is no doubt that conditioning is a bit of work, especially as I don't yet know by heart what to do with which flower and first have to look it up on the internet. I had noticed that Euphorbias sometimes flop a bit and so, after some internet searches, I seared the stems in boiling water for a few seconds. I also used a pin to prick the tulip stems just under their heads as this supposedly prevents them from hanging.  I'll let you know next week, but for now I can tell you that several hours in they are all doing really well. I may be imagining things, but I think that the tulips have actually grown in the last few hours ....

Here's the end result, including a picture with last week's bunch as well (after a little tidy up ie removing some dead flowers and a few yellow leaves).

My other bunch is .... well, I can assure you that it really exists and isn't like one of those stickers that tell you about the imaginary car that the not-so-proud car owner would rather have driven. It's just that my wallflowers have dropped their heads a bit within a few hours of cutting them. One website recommends splitting the stems and letting them soak up warm water overnight, so I hope this works and if so I'll put some pictures in next week's blog. 

Luckily I have got another bunch of flowers to show you, one that I made two days ago. I have had early flowering hyacinths in the house for many years and I planted those out on the allotment afterwards where they have flowered the following years. Two days ago I couldn't resist cutting some as they looked so good, not to mention their divine scent. I never cut them before as they have such short stems and didn't know quite how to arrange them. 

The good thing about this blog is that it is forcing me to find solutions and in this case it is a kilner jar. Although I have quite a few small vases, a kilner jar is wide as well as shallow. I added some helleborus foetidus (stinking hellebore), some blackthorn blossom, rosemary, grape hyacinths and one of my favourite annuals: gray-blue Cerinthe major 'Purpurascens' or honeywort. It keeps self-sowing in the most unlikely places and these I found in the asparagus bed. 

I have to confess that this is not the only bunch of flowers in the house. I cut some forsythia in a friend's garden and put it in a vase with some catkins in a fairly random way (and only photographed it tonight).

Then I also made a bunch earlier this week for a friend and left some wallflowers with some Euphorbia oblongata and forsythia on the doorstep of the friend with the forsythias. 

So four bunches and hopefully one to be revealed, not bad for one week!

I can tell you that it was cold this morning. And foggy. And damp. And it was the only time that I could do my flowers, so I just had to get on with it. 

If I would have had my act together last autumn and I would have actually potted up those hyacinths when I received them in October, I have no doubt that they would have made it into the house a few weeks ago. I could even have put the bulbs in the fridge for a few weeks to force them on a bit. However, I only potted them up in January, so it is a miracle that they are flowering at all.

Indeed, if I would have had my act together, I could even have bought some prepared hyacinth bulbs at a garden centre in September. These are specifically labelled as they have been heat-treated (read cold-treated) and are as such more expensive. In the past I have bought them, potted them up (wearing gloves as they can irritate the skin) and left them in the garage until they had a bit more than an inch growth on them. I then brought them out in the light somewhere still cold a week or so before bringing them indoors. This was in January and they cost half of buying hyacinths in flower. By following this process you can have flowering hyacinths in the house from Christmas onwards, so it is worth doing.

The heat-treatment, as far as I gather, means that they have been put in cold storage for 12-16 weeks after being lifted as early as June. They form flowers in cold storage because they think it is already winter. I may try an experiment myself this year, to see if I can trick some of my hyacinths into waking up early. Apparently the vegetable drawer of the fridge would work. I'll let you know in about 10 months time, if I get my act together that is! 

So, now for this week's bunch. I couldn't just put the hyacinths on the table, could I. So here they are in a fake-moss basket, with some floristry foam (see my ps below) between the three little pots with the hyacinths, some ivy and olive and buddleia twigs. I didn't actually put the ivy in the foam, as it can survive very well without water. Anybody who has ever tried to kill ivy growing up a tree knows that you have to wait at least two months after severing it before it dies - and you better make sure that you take at least ten centimeters out, because just cutting it an leaving it more or less in place is not killing it, but probably only interrupting its growth for a few weeks. Coming back to a flower display, a week in a flower basket without water is hardly going to affect ivy. 

As a finishing touch I added some daphne (Daphne odora Aureomarginata), for fragrance as well as for colour. I considered using some grape hyacinths, but decided that I wanted harmony rather than contrast. 

Ps 1 -  I looked up floristry foam as was wondering what it is made of. Apparently it is made of plastic that isn't biodegradable. Long exposure could also be harmful to you as it is full of toxins. Therefore I am going to use up what I bought (I only bought one block) and then think about alternatives. 

Ps 2 - My bunch of flowers from last week is still standing. I can however tell you that hellebores are messy when they haven't yet formed their flower pods as they keep shedding their stamen. I had to get the vacuum cleaner out a few times. Also some flowers needed an additional two treatments of searing their stems in boiled water for 20 seconds. But every time they lifted up their heads and have lasted for another few days. The euphorbias that I picked originally weren't doing great as well, so I replaced them with some Euphorbia oblongata from my allotment. But the result isn't bad at all. This is the picture that I took this morning.

Last week's bunch was a mixed success.  After searing the stems of the hellebores I actually had to cut a bit off, as they were too tall and subsequently they were flopping within a day or two. I also noticed that they really didn't like the sun and heat in the conservatory. Once moved to the bar/kitchen area, they were considerably happier and because they were at a place where we regularly walk past, the scent of the daphne was even more noticeable. 

So, having learnt my lesson (well, one hopes), I decided that this week's bunch would automatically end up on the bar, especially since I can't resist using Hellebores again and this time the dark blue ones. I also added some euphorbia's which are creeping under the fence from the neighbour's garden. I don't know how they do as cut flowers, but decided to take the risk because of their wonderful green-yellow colour. I added some Stipa gigantea grass, fern leaves and willow catkins and this is the end result: 

They are now safely on the bar and this is the view at eye height. 

As with all euphorbia's, the milky white sap can be an irritant, so if you do get it on your hands (which of course I did), wash it off directly. Some people do get terrible allergic reactions. 

When thinking about this week's bunch,  I was tempted to pick some daffodils as they are such wonderful spring flowers. The disadvantage of daffodils is however that they give off a substance in the vase that is harmful to other flowers so you can never put them in a mixed bouquet. Apart from -as my friend this afternoon pointed out- catkins. So maybe that's an idea for next week! But maybe the wallflowers will then blossom as well, or the hyacinths which I potted up terribly late. 

I so love spring!