Buying Long-Stem Rose Tips: Difference in Length

I'm Julie Klingaman with Grohe Florist. And June is National Rose Month, so I thought what better day than today to tell you about the difference of rose lengths. The typical length of a long-stem rose is 50 centimeter, which is this white rose right here. The next step up is a 60 centimeter rose which is called an "extra-fancy rose." Then there's the 70 centimeter rose which is called an "elite-rose length," Most florists will use a 60 or 70 for the dozen roses that they send out, which is a reason why you pay more when you go to a florist to get your dozen roses.

When you see the 50 centimeter and 40 centimeters tend to be less expensive. The rose heads also tend to be a little bit smaller. Now, this is not necessarily always true, because domestically grown roses don't always have as big of a rose head as some of the imported roses. But you should really think about how you're helping your local economy when you buy a domestic rose over a imported rose.

Another factor to consider when you're purchasing roses is that, just because a rose looks open, doesn't mean that it's necessarily old. Sometimes, the way that they grow roses is for them to give that open show, but they'll hold and last for a long time. So the best thing to do when you're shopping for roses, and if you're really there to be hands on, is to feel the bud and to feel how firm it feels. Make sure that it doesn't squish when you do it. So like you can see on this rose, I don't know if you can see on camera, how when I squeeze it, my thumb kinda imprints in it, this rose is not going to last as long as these three up here, and these three were all a lot more firm.

I hope that this information will help you when you're selecting roses the next time you're shopping at your local florist. Thank you, and have a great day.

Cut Flower Care For Roses

I'm Julie Klingaman with Grohe Florist, and June is National Rose Month. So today I'm going to talk to you about the care of your roses. You've received roses and you want them to last as long as possible, so I'm going to give you some ideas of how to keep the flowers lasting. First of all, you want your water to be clean, so you're going to need to change the water about every other day. You either will need to have two people there, somebody to hold the arrangement while you change the water, or you're going to need two vases. I have two vases with me. I have some clean water, and I'm lucky because I have floral preservative to put in the water already.

At home, if you don't have floral preservative, just make sure you have nice clean water in a clean vase. The other alternative to floral preservative is Sprite or Sierra Mist. I've tried a few experiments and that one seemed to work the best from the old wives tale of what you put in your water to make your roses last. What you're going to need to do is take your arrangement out of the vase, and you want to strip down any of the leaves that are in there, 'cause that will help create bacteria growth, so you want to strip down any leaves.

If you're going to take some scissors, or if you have pruners from your garden, you want to trim about a half an inch off of each rose, and that's going to help them have a nice fresh cut, so that they can start drinking up the clean water. You don't want to trim too much 'cause you want to be able to keep doing this about every other day so you don't want the flowers to get too short. So, like I said, about a half an inch is enough. This is where sometimes having a second hand is helpful. You want to stick it back down into the vase, and you gotta get all the stems together and bring it down in. And now you have a nice, fresh arrangement again, with clean water.

I hope this helps you keep your roses lasting as long as possible. Have a great day.

How To Make A Carnation Lei - DIY

Hi. I'm Julie Klingaman with Grohe Florist and it is graduation season, which also means lei season for florists and for all you graduates out there. Today, I'm going to demonstrate making a carnation lei. The reason I'm choosing carnations is because they're hardy, and hold up, and because they come in an array of colors. What you will need is ribbon, a long needle, and carnations. You need about 40 to 45 carnations. The bunches usually come up 25, so when you call your local florist to purchase the carnations, give them a couple days to get the colors that you're interested in, and they can get you bunches and you can just buy them by the bunch.

What you're going to do first is you're going to take all the carnations off of their stems. And you can use scissors or clippers if you happen to have them, and you just clip it right at the base and clip it right off. And then you're going to just take your carnation and string it through the base, and you can use a table to help you get it through and pull it right on. And you can decide if you want to do a pattern. You can do one solid color if you want to. When choosing your colors, you can choose colors that match your school colors, or you can choose a favorite color, or you can just do a mixture of colors like I am doing today. I picked three colors. It's what I had in my cooler, so that's what we're using. As you're pushing them down, you can see how the carnations will sit within each other. So, you don't want to leave a lot of space between them. You want to let them go. They open up in the center and you let them sit within each other. If you're going to have a party the next day or two days later, you can just put it in your fridge and it will hold up so that you can wear a carnation lei a couple days later. With orchid leis, you can do that as well. The problem with orchid leis is they break a little easier. So, with all the hugging that you're doing with people, sometimes the orchid leis begin to... The orchids begin to break off of the lei.

One other thing I forgot to mention was sometimes when you get your carnations, they may be a little bit tight. Some of these yellow ones are a little bit tighter and what you can do is you can just take the flower and with your fingers just push it open a little bit more just to open it up a little bit. This is going to be the 40th carnation I've put on here. So you can see when I put it together what length you would get with 40. Then, when I can cut this other end off of this, the ribbons, the spool, and tie them together, and it just slides right in. This is with 40 carnations. You can see this is a tight one. So, if it's for somebody smaller, 40's okay. If it's for somebody taller, bigger, I would go with at least 45, and if they're really tall, 50. You're going to get 50 if you buy two bunches anyway. You might as well use them. But that is how to make a carnation lei. So, have fun and happy graduation.

Difference Between A Single And Double Lei

 

Hi, I'm Julie Klingaman with Grohe Florist. It is graduation season which means for us on the West Coast it's also lei season. And we get a lot of phone calls this time of year people wanting to order leis and they're not really sure what we mean when we ask, "Do you want a single or a double?" So today I want to show you the difference between a single lei and a double orchid lei. This here is a single Mokara orchid lei. This one comes in a variety of colors all on one lei. They're a little bit shorter than the doubles and they're strung differently than the doubles are strung.

 

These also comes in white Dendrobium orchid leis or purple Dendrobiums. This is a double orchid lei. These are made with Dendrobium orchids, they're strung differently than the singles. They're strung by the backs of them so you can see the flowers on each side, where the singles are strung through the center of the flower.

This kind of shows you the difference in sizes. The doubles come also in white or purple Dendrobiums. They also come in one that's called a color block where you'll see a chunk of white, a chunk of purple, a chunk of white. Lastly, are carnation leis. We make the carnation leis ourselves so if you give us a couple days we can make Carnation leis in any color that you choose. I hope that this gives you enough information so when you're making your lei orders you know the difference between single or double or carnation. I hope you have a great day, and happy graduation.