You can find more information, photos and advice sheets on all the plants and recipes that we talk about in this podcast by heading to the links in the show notes or on our website at sarahavin.com.

Welcome to Grow Cookieterange, the podcast of me, Sarah Raven, and my friend Arthur Parkinson.

And today we're going to chat about something that we both feel is unbelievably important

because it's what turns garden flowers, the things just on your doorstep, into

wonderful indoor flowers, i.e. cut flowers that you can have all over your house. And it's the

thing that makes the difference between a stem, even like a poppy, lasting for five days

or lasting for less than a day in its conditioning, conditioning cut flowers.

We've touched on it before in episodes, but we really thought that it would be incredibly

useful to everyone to have this as summer is, is sort of really coming into full throttle.

And the garden is full of lovely things, which like roses you tend to bring in and they

drop their petals all too quickly. So, Arthur, what do you feel is the kind of number one thing

that you can do to turn a garden plant into a long-lasting

cut flower? Well, I think that the most thing to remember is that as soon as you take

a pair of scissors to a flower, you've cut off its water source. So you have to get that flower

and water straight away. I think me and you are both big campaigners for forgetting this country lady style habits of having that wooden trug under our arm, aren't we?

Where you're encouraged to just gather things and put them in a wooden truck and then drop back into the house and then put things in water.

But as we know, things flop within

minutes, particularly at this time here. And this is why we've chosen to talk about it this time here,

because, you know, the temperature is getting higher. And with hot weather, things flop as soon as you

cut them much more easily. So that would be my first thing that you've taught me to do.

Ever since I've known you, you take a bucket of water out into the garden with you, regardless of what you're picking.

And even if you're picking just a handful of sweet peas, you know, take a mug full of water out with you and put them in the mug of water, then take them into the house to arrange.

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