Old-Time Tips For Flowers & Plants: Timeless Wisdom

These snippets of quick tips come from a household booklet published in 1947 and features advice given for handling plants, cut flowers and a couple gardening related tips.

The Timeless Wisdom collection is a regular feature on Tipnut where we take a look back at the advice and techniques used decades ago in household management, many are still useful for today.

Old-Time Tips For Flowers & Plants

• Since house plants grow toward the light, be sure to turn the plants you keep near the window around every few days to prevent lopsided growth.
• The top of a pineapple, planted in a pint jar of water, will sprout and root, soon making an exotic and most attractive palm-like plant (see How To Grow Your Own Pineapple).
• A novelty hanging vine can be grown from a sweet potato by planting it in a hanging basket or pot of sand (or a sandy loam), then watering occasionally. The leaves are dark green and resemble ivy.
• Gladioli, snapdragons and stocks can be cut down when their lower blossoms fade. Rearrange them in lower vases gradually and, when you are down to the last blossom, place the tips of the flowers in a dish on the dinner table. Large flowers which have opened fully (like roses) can also be displayed on the table with their stems cut short.
• To prolong the life of cut flowers, handle them gently from the moment they are cut and never lay them on top of each other while arranging them.
• Double the life of those pretty flowers by cutting their stems at a long slant. They’ll absorb more water that way you’ll brighten your home with their extra freshness. Another authority recommends this way to keep cut flowers fresh: add a lump of sugar or camphor to the water.
• Even four-day-old roses can keep on shedding beauty in your home if properly cared for. Cut their stems very short, eliminate most of the greens and set them in a thick cluster in a shallow bowl. They can be preserved even longer if they are nestled floating in a deep saucer where they can drain up plenty of water.
• Flowers will keep longer if the leaves below the water are removed. Decaying vegetable matter poisons the water.
• If you enjoy gardening but want to avoid grimy fingernails, scrape them over a wet cake of soap before beginning to work. This will keep the dirt out and the soap will easily rinse out afterwards (see Gardener’s Hands 101: Protection & Cleaning Tips).
• Cut flowers should be “hardened” before being arranged in vases. When the flowers arrive, glance at the base of the stems. Have these been freshly cut? If so, place the stems in deep, cool water in a roomy jar. Place the jar in a cool place for a few hours before you arrange the flowers. This process insures absorption by the stems of all the water they can hold. If the stems are dark-tipped, the cut is not fresh. Snip off half an inch from each stem and place in deep water as described above. Be sure to change the water for your flowers each day and recut the stems.
• A good treatment for sick plants: Put several empty eggshells into a milk bottle filled with water and let stand for a day. Then water the plants with this mixture.
• To revive “sick” ferns, water them with 1/2 teacup of salt added to six pints of lukewarm water. If infested with worms, stick matches into the soil, sulfur end down. For an ordinary sized plant, use four matches–six for a large pot. The sulfur does the trick.
• To waterproof your flower pots, simply dip them into melted paraffin so that it sinks into the pores.
• Protect your smaller garden tools from rusting by keeping a pail of sand near the garage or cellar door and plunging them into the sand when through with them.

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