Keeping your cut flower fresh 2 – kenzan

A somewhat counter-intuitive way to keep your cut flower fresh for at least several days is to stick them on a spiky metal device called “kenzan” – which allows you to fix stems in specific spots/angles. Your flower and kenzan will be placed inside a vase with a low level of water at the bottom.

Your flower stems will not be bathing in a big reservoir of water, and instead, the level of water is typically about 2 to 3 inches, enough to have your kenzan and the bottom of stems submerged in water. Poking of stems at the bottom helps create water passage, and a low water level helps stave off growths of bacteria around the stems. As long as you give each stem a fresh cut in a bowl of water (sharp flower scissors also help) at the beginning, make sure there’s sufficient level of water in the vase at all times, and change water (and ideally another fresh cut) every few days, your flowers will have a good chance of looking fresh for several days, or even more.

However, as much as I love peonies, affordable bunches available in regular grocery stores (like these) often age super fast, and despite best efforts, they may look like the ones below on the 5th or so day, like a drained beauty. Someone said you can revive them by putting in a fridge after a fresh cut. I tried and and it seem to help marginally. To make that method to work, it probably should have been acted on it while they were still relatively fresh looking.

Both the kenzan and the flower scissors below are at least 2 decades old, and were kept under my total neglect, so they do not appear in top shapes, but still work beautifully!