Cottage Gardening- Beautiful Hollyhocks

Oh those beautiful hollyhocks! Tall and stately growing in the garden against a picket fence – we adore their big blooms and how much charm their pretty flowers bring. I mentioned recently that my husband brought a bucket full of cut hollyhocks home from a local farmstead recently and several of you messaged about more info on what I have learned about cut hollyhocks so far. Today, sharing a few tidbits.

Beautiful Hollyhocks

Hollyhocks are such beautiful flowers in the garden. I remember the first time we tossed some seeds out into the beds. It wasn’t long before they started to grow in so tall and bloom beautifully- absolutely charming! We found some self seeded ones the next year (incidentally, nowhere near where we planted them!) and I even dried some of them for using in dried arrangements. But we had not had any cut hollyhocks in the house until recently. It turns out there is a method to the madness of keeping them looking beautiful and in bloom when cutting them.

Searing the Ends

Hollyhocks are like hydrangeas- they have those hollow tubes that seal over when you cut them. So if you wander out into your garden, clip a few of them and place them into a vase- they will start to wilt with a few hours. The leaves fall flat, the tops bend over and the flowers start to wilt away. You can see some of that starting in the photo below.

Basically, like with hydrangeas, you need something like alum or boiling water or a flame to keep the ends of the stalks open so that the flowers continue to get water and stay fresh. The farm stand had already seared the ends of this bucket full with a blow torch (thinking hand held small type?) and so I thought they were good to go. But by the next day, a whole lot of them were drooping already.

Boiling water

I boiled a pot of water and made fresh cuts on an angle (above the burned bottoms) and placed them into the boiling water for at least 1 minute. Then they went straight into a bucket of fresh water to soak up all the goodness. I repeated with each hollyhock that was drooping. Next day, about 1/2 of them had perked up and were back to beautiful. The other half, I went back and repeated the fresh cut, boiling water and fresh water process.

Basically the boiling water does the same thing that a blow torch does- it keeps the ends of the cut flower from closing so the water can continue to keep the flower looking fresh.

A shorter cut

I needed a couple shorter hollyhocks and so, when cutting them again, I decided to try the burn method. I used a flame to sear the end of the stalks and guess what? Day 2 and they are standing tall and blooming like they were freshly cut. So it definitely does work!

Another thing I noticed- they may irritate your skin if you are sensitive. I was carrying the cut stems around for a few photos and a red rash did start to appear on my skin on my arms. I just rinsed with warm soapy water and it was fine but did read that their stems can irritate skin so just something to be aware of.

Any Tips? Do you have any tips or tricks for cut hollyhocks? Please share them in the comments if so!