Submerged flowers-Part 2

[Flore]

Ok....another question for my submerged flowers saga.
The gerbers came in with the stems hard as a rock. No flexibility whatsoever, and they feel like any handling is going to make them snap. Any ideas on how I can soften the stems?

 

[shannonlovesflowers]

Leave them out of water to get limp.

 

[RWK]

What type of vase were you to put the gerbs in? Was'nt it to be a shorter, wider mouth container?

In that case, trim your stems super short......leaving them out of water will stress the bloom and they don't always recover well.

What I do is wire the gerbera similar to wiring a daisy for a corsage - insert a wire up the stem, through the center of the blloom, bend the end into a u shape, pull it back down till the U catches the center of the bloom.....then wrap a heavy lead fishing weight around the wire at the stem end.....trim excess wire, and drop into the vase.

You might need stones, rocks, marbles, etc to hide the weights.

 

[Flore]

Thanks for the input. Yes, I am cutting them short, but I wanted to be able to play with the stems to wrap a bit around vase rather than hang straight down, but that doesn't seem like it's going to work since they are stiff as a board, so I'm going to do the fishing weight technique you mentioned...thanks!!!

 

[shannonlovesflowers]

well, all I can tell ya is that I was advised by an instructor at TF ed center to let them get limp enough to manage.

I've done it before when making "under glass" arrangements and never had a prob.

BUT I'm not saying that you for sure wont.

 

[Flore]

This job is for an event planner I do work for, so don't want to take any chances, but we are doing a small bridal show next weekend that we can experiment with, so will try your suggestion and let you know