When you get your Sweet Peas, you will need to unpack them as soon as possible. They will need a good drink first, so fill a tall vase or a small bucket with enough clean water so that, when the flowers are put in this water, the stems are touching the bottom and the lowest flowers on the stems are only just above the water level. Then put them in a cool place and leave for a few hours until they have taken up some water and the tops of the stems feel quite firm and the petals feel slightly ‘crisp’again. Then they are ready to be arranged in a vase as required. There is no need for deep water in your arranging vase if they have had their first drink in deep water.
If they go into deep water first, it is also not usually necessary to recut the bottom of the stems unless you have a problem getting the flowers to take up water. If you are not familiar with Sweet Peas, it is good to remember that the tops of the flower stems will naturally be curled over if there are still immature flowers at the top of the stem – it doesn’t mean the flowers are wilting.
If you are not ready to use your flowers straight away (for example, wedding flowers held awaiting preparation), you can put them in a vase or bucket, take out a couple of shelves in a large domestic fridge and store them in there. This will be fine – put the fridge on a mild/medium setting and it will keep the flowers at 3 – 4 deg.C. But in a ‘larder’ type fridge (a fridge without an ice box) keep them away from the back wall of the fridge as they may be frosted there!
The stem length of your Sweet Peas will vary according to time of the season, the growing temperature, and the stage of development of the plant. All our 1st Grade stems have a minimum length of 34cms (just over 13”), but more usually 40 – 45cms.
We are sometimes asked if we can ‘leave the tendrils on’. But the tendrils grow at the ends of the leaves on the plant, not on the flower stems.
All our flowers are treated with a safe long-life flower food, but how long they last will depend on what temperature they are kept at and how clean the vase water is. As a guide, the supermarkets we supply guarantee a five day life for Sweet Peas, but they can last for 3 weeks in a cool environment and suffer greatly if left in a hot sunny room in the middle of summer.