Care of Tropical Flowers and Foliages

Tropical flowers and foliages are unique in the floral world. As such they require different care and treatment to gain the most life from them.

What We Do

Unlike most flowers tropicals when picked will take up very little water through the stem. Two things govern the life of the flower. Firstly, how much water the grower has been able to force into the plant before the flower is picked, and secondly how much moisture can be retained in the flower post harvest.

Tropical Blooms has many kilometres of underground high tech computer controlled irrigation. We use around 150,000 litres of water every night over the farm to maintain maximum turgidity in our plants before picking. Our team of pickers starts at dawn and quickly move through the flowers in the early morning cool. As the flowers are picked they are being collected and transported to our processing shed. Here they are trimmed and quality checked before being dipped in a special antitranspirant solution to reduce moisture loss.

None of our product is held for more than 24 hours before shipping. We use plastic lined "wet pack box's" to retain maximum moisture during transit.

What You Do

When you receive a box of our tropicals you should unpack them carefully, as they can be quite brittle when fully saturated. Remove the flowers from the box and if possible submerse the entire flower and stem in a large tub of water for 15 minutes. Recut the stems whilst underwater and remove any pieces of packing paper. Try not to wipe off the protective glossy antitranspirant. If you do not have a tub large enough for the flowers use the deepest bucket you have and stand the flowers in this to soak. Mist heavily any part of the flower above water level.

Tropicals are very cold sensitive so do not use ice cold tap water and if possible do not expose them to temperatures below 10 c. Do not ever refrigerate your tropical flowers.
Florists should display the tropicals in their store during the day at room temperature and mist them regularly. At night place them in a large bucket filled to the top, mist them, and then drop a big garbage bag over the whole lot. This will ensure you retain maximum moisture levels in the flowers and therefore maximum life for your customers.
Home users should treat tropicals the same as florists on receiving them but instead of bagging them overnight you should just mist them regularly and change the water every few days.

Do not store flowers near direct sunlight, in draughts or near heaters. Reverse cycle air conditioning dries out the atmosphere very quickly so flowers will require extra misting to maintain humidity around them under these conditions.
Remove any leaves that curl and trim brown tips from flowers if they occur. These are both symptoms of moisture loss or heat stress. Browning at the base of the flower head is caused by cold damage.

Heliconia's have small florets in the bracts called "day flowers" and it is common for a few of these to drop through the life of the flower, particularly in the first few days after picking. Because we do not hold any product for more than 24 hours you will find more of these florets with our flowers than from some other sources. This is an entirely normal aspect of Heliconia flowers and is a good indicator of flower freshness.