Shoutout to the lady in Tulsa who warned me about stem rot

I spent 3 hours trying to salvage a batch of hydrangeas last month that just kept wilting. Turns out I was buying them already infected from the wholesaler and didn't check the stems close enough. Anyone else deal with sneaky rot from your supplier?

3 comments

3 Comments

luna26111d ago

Has anyone else felt like a plant detective doing the sniff test on stems in the middle of a store, @emma_lee22? I definitely looked like a weirdo checking my hydrangeas last week, and it still didn't save me from buying a bad batch anyway.

blair99011d ago

Actually its not always the wholesalers fault. A lot of times the rot starts from overwatering at the farm level before they even get cut. The stems look fine on the outside but the inside is already breaking down. You gotta do the sniff test on the cut ends before you buy. If it smells like wet dirt or kinda sour, skip it. Also check the nodes on the stem for any dark spots. I learned this the hard way after losing like 5 buckets of roses. Once that bacteria gets in the water, it spreads to everything else in the vase too.

emma_lee2211d ago

Oh man, I actually heard about that sniff test thing from a florist friend a while back. She said the same thing about checking the cut ends, I never thought about it before but it makes total sense.