How To Care For Cut Tulips So They Last Longer

Tulips are beautiful flowers that we love to use to decorate our homes. Here are easy ways to care for cut tulips and keep them looking fresher longer, enhancing their beauty!

With their beautiful colors, artistically graceful shape, and widespread availability, tulips are a popular choice for bringing life and charm into a room. Cut tulips can grace your spaces for up to a week with just a little care and attention. Here are easy ways to keep your cut tulips looking fresh longer.

A Little Interesting Tulip History

The allure of tulips has been almost legendary going back several centuries.

During a period in history called tulip mania, around 1637, one single tulip bulb sold for 10 times the annual salary of a skilled craftsman. Tulips were prized for their beauty and no wonder. Just think: We can get a grocery store bunch of tulips, a king’s ransom, for around $7.00.

Best Places To Buy Cut Tulips

The most convenient place to buy tulips is in your local grocery store, especially if it is a regional or national chain. They are quite reasonably priced. I can also get tulips at a few local greenhouses owned by Amish people. I found the beautiful double tulips at John and Rachel’s flower farm, close to where I live. I asked permission to snap a couple of pictures of a small section of their refrigerated room filled with tulips and ranunculus.

If you have a local Trader Joe’s, you might be able to find fancier tulips, like double tulips or even peony tulips.

You can also find tulips online, such as Dutch tulips, parrot tulips, fringe tulips, and other varieties.

Choosing The Right Tulips

It’s easy to choose the right tulips for a week of beauty and enjoyment. Here are a few other things to look for when choosing the right bunch of tulips:

• You can select tulips with closed flower buds. Just make sure the flower’s color is easily seen. This is called a color crack. See the image below.
• Unopened tulips look interesting in a tulip arrangement, so don’t shy away from them.
• Look for stems that are firm and not floppy.
• Check that the leaves are not crushed or yellow.
• Inspect the bottom of the stems- put that bunch back if they look cracked or dried out.

Now that we’ve chosen the perfect bunch of fresh-cut tulips, here are the best ways to ensure they stay fresh when you get them home.

Condition Your Tulips

By the time you get home, your tulips are probably starting to wilt and need rehydration. This will help extend the life of your tulips, and it is easy to condition or rehydrate tulips. I know most of us want to immediately put our flowers in a vase and display them. However, if you are a little patient and follow a few easy steps, your tulips will look fresher for much longer.

Cut The Tulip Stems

The image above shows the ends of the tulip stems before they were cut. The bulbs were dug up, and I thought the white ends of the stems were so interesting,

Cut the tulip stems at a 45° angle. Use a pair of sharp scissors or a knife. This is an initial cut, so water can flow up the stem.

Remove The Leaves

Part of the beauty of tulips is their long, graceful leaves. Some leaves should be removed to keep tulips healthy and fresh. For conditioning, remove the most outer leaves on the stem.

Put Tulips In Water To Rehydrate

Plunge freshly cut tulips in a bucket of water up to the bloom for several hours or overnight. This is a very important step that will rehydrate store-bought cut tulips and ensure a long-lasting, fresh-looking tulip arrangement.

Choosing The Right Vase

Choosing the right vase is an important step in creating an attractive, eye-catching tulip arrangement. Here are a few helpful tips for preparing and choosing a vase…

The Right Vase For Your Tulips

There are a couple things to consider when choosing the right vase for cut tulips.

One of the jobs of a vase is to support the flowers in it. For tulips, a vase should be half to two-thirds the height of the tulips when cut.

There are many differing opinions about the right vase opening for tulips. Some say a vase with a narrow opening works best, and others say a vase with a wide opening is best. I’m not entrenched in one camp or the other. What matters most is whether your tulips will comfortably and beautifully fill the vase you choose.

Tulips should not be cramped and crowded in a vase, and they should not fall over due to the vase’s lack of support. If you have a smaller bouquet of tulips, choose a vase with a narrower opening, and if you have a larger bunch, use a wider-mouthed vase.

A Clean Vase

A meticulously clean vase is a must. Wash the vase with warm, soapy water and give it a thorough rinse. Dry it with a clean towel.

Tulips Need Lots Of Water

Tulips are thirsty flowers, and they need plenty of clean water. Again, there are many opinions about water temperature. However, I use cool water for my tulips. Whether you use cool, room-temperature, or tepid water, the most important thing is that the water is clean.

Do I Need To Condition The Water

If your cut tulips come with a packet of flower food, save it for another cut flower bouquet. Flower food usually contains sugar, which can promote bacteria. And tulips are especially susceptible to the smallest amount of bacteria.

The Penny Trick

Putting a penny in a vase of tulips actually may help to extend their life and freshness. The copper in a penny acts as a fungicide. However, only pennies made before 1982 have enough copper in them to work.

Other Remedies To Help Tulips Stay Fresh

A clean vase and clean, fresh water are the best environments for keeping tulips looking their best. Other remedies for keeping tulips looking good longer, such as adding vodka, bleach, gin, or piercing the stems of tulips, don’t really work.

Changing The Water

Tulips drink a lot of water, so it is essential to change the water daily or every other day. This also keeps their water supply clean and lessens the harmful effects of bacteria. Doing this one thing, along with cutting the ends of the tulips, will extend the life of your tulips more than anything else.

Arranging Tulips In A Vase

We might think we arrange tulips, but tulips have a mind of their own. They change, bend, and elongate the longer you have them. They arrange themselves. I actually LOVE all their transitions! The key is to enjoy their artistic beauty and how they decide to arrange themselves throughout their lives in a vase!

There are many ways to arrange tulips in a vase, but the easiest way is my favorite. Gather up the tulips in your hands, making sure the ends of the tulips are all the same length, and drop them into the vase. Once they are in the vase, loosely hold your hands around them just above the top of the vase with your hand rotating them clockwise. And finally, fan out any tulips that need it

If you are using a glass vase, you will be able to see a slight and artistic turn to the stems in the vase.

The Unique Nature Of Tulips

After cut tulips are in a vase, they will grow and rearrange themselves. This is the unique nature of tulips. They grow because of a plant hormone that causes them to elongate, and they will shift in a vase because tulips grow toward the light.

This can cause your tulip arrangement to continually and artfully change. I love how graceful tulips can look, so I embrace this change and cut only a small amount of their stems as they grow.

About Drooping Tulips

Tulips droop as a natural part of their life cycle or because their flower heads are too heavy for their stems. I think drooping tulips can look graceful and beautiful, so I often embrace their growth in an arrangement.

However, if you want your tulips to stay upright for as long as possible, here are a few things you can do.

• Keep them in a cool location and out of direct sunlight.
• Cut the tulip stems and change the water daily or every other day.
• Rinse out the vase when you change the water.
• Make sure they are in a vase that can support them.

Other Things To Know

Here are a few more tips for keeping your tulips lasting longer…

• Keep tulips away from fruit emitting the gas ethylene, such as apples, bananas, avocados, and tomatoes. This will speed up the aging process of tulips.
• Putting a few ice cubes in the water will slow down the opening process of the tulips.

With these simple tips, you can enjoy your cut tulips for longer, brightening up your space with their color, charm, and delicate beauty. Embrace the joy they bring to your home! 🌷

Video (click to play)

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