Enjoy Bug-Free Cut Flowers from Your Garden Indoors

We love to bring fresh-cut flowers in from our gardens, but unwanted hitchhikers like ants, aphids, and spiders also can come along for the ride. Insects are part of a garden's ecosystem, and most of them are beneficial; only a tiny fraction are serious pests. However, that doesn't mean you need to share your living room with bugs. And the insects would probably rather stay outside too, where they can perform important tasks such as pollination, preying on garden pests, and more.

You're probably already in the habit of cleaning your homegrown produce, but here's why you should also clean off your cut flowers, plus a step-by-step guide on how to do it effectively.

Why to Clean Cut Flowers

Besides leaving insects outside where they belong, cleaning off cut flowers before taking them inside helps reduce the amount of dirt and mess you'll have to deal with later. Some common examples of what you may find on your flowers include:

Native bees commonly take a snooze in the evening, curling up inside a dahlia petal, a sunflower, or on top of a zinnia. 

Tiny caterpillars on the foliage are often hard to see.

Aphids and spider mites brought in on cut flowers can find their way to your houseplants.

If you've ever had a grasshopper in the house, you know that they're just as hard to catch indoors as outside.

Loose pollen and dust cause a mess under your vase. While it's difficult to completely avoid, the less you bring in, the less there is to fall.

Soil splashed onto lower foliage and stems makes your vase water muddy, which inhibits water uptake by the flowers and shortens their life. It gets your vase dirty, too.

Article Tags: