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Care & Handling: May 2007 |
| Written by Gayle Smith | |
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Spring Cleaning Sanitation for the Floral Nation After months of dark, dreary winter days, it is time to shake out the rugs, chase down dust bunnies and launch a shop-wide, deep-cleaning program. Don’t just focus on cleaning alone – consider other areas of shop activity that could benefit from tuneup. Act fast to beat the crunch of Mother’s Day, proms, graduations and weddings. Now is a great time to review basic handling procedures. Set aside an hour every Tuesday for the next month to review and revisit care and handling training so everyone in your shop is on the same page and up to date on the proper treatments for maximizing vase performance (and reducing shrink!). Sharpen the Shears Let’s start with roses. Regardless if you process roses using a one-step procedure – placing the flowers directly into display solution, or a two-step process – hydration solution for the first drink overnight, then transferring flowers into buckets containing a display flower food (low sugar), do consider the following details. Use sharp shears or cutters so there are no ragged edges. Ragged edges encourage bacterial infection. It is exactly the same concept with wounds on our body. A clean cut will heal faster with less possibility of infection than a wound that’s comprised of scraped skin. Another consideration is to establishing a sanitation program so those cutters and choppers are sanitized daily. This procedure helps you avoid cross-contaminating stems. Strip, Don’t Peel What about stripping foliage on roses? Make sure all your flower handlers know it is important to strip only the foliage falling below the waterline because the specialized cells on the underside of rose foliage act as pumps and pull solution up the stems. Need to make a “topiary” design? Make sure your roses hydrate at least 12 hours so the stems are completely filled before removing leaves. Another bad habit? Removing guard petals! Don’t peel out of habit! Of course, remove petals that are damaged or show signs of Botrytis, but otherwise, leave guard petals intact. Why? Removing guards loosens the entire bud structure and promotes bloom opening. Also, peeling results in a wound at the juncture where the petal “hooks” onto the calyx. Flowers (including roses) produce ethylene as a reaction to wounding and bruising. Ethylene speeds up the aging process! A Hard Look at Shop Sanitation What sanitation methods are you putting into place during your spring cleaning? To properly sanitize buckets, work surfaces, floors and coolers, it is critical to use a flower-friendly sanitizer – not just bleach. Sodium hypochlorite (bleach) is aggressive, but not very stable. When diluted, it loses its antibacterial effect very quickly, regardless if you smell chlorine. What you are smelling are chlorine molecules evaporating into the air. Keep in mind the “active” antibacterial power of chlorine is a one-time expenditure – no residual action. Whether it is fighting the bacteria in a dirty bucket or bacteria clinging to the stem of a flower, once chlorine kills microbes, it is rendered inactive. A better choice for sanitation is a quaternary ammonium-based cleaner. Quat cleaners have long residual power, don’t produce noxious chlorine odour nor ruin clothes. Quat-based floral cleaner concentrates are available at your wholesaler. Scrub inside and out then let buckets dry thoroughly before stacking to avoid cross-contaminating nested buckets. Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan Develop a cleaning schedule and stick to it. A log with cleaning schedules helps keep sanitation practices from becoming tasks that are only accomplished when convenient. Tools should be sanitized two to three times daily. In fact, consider setting up a cup with cleaning solution at each work station so designers can dip tools throughout the day and avoid cross-contaminating stems as they design. Change the solution daily. Don’t forget to make a spray bottle of cleaner so table surfaces get spritzed several times daily as well. Buckets should be sanitized every time they are emptied. Cooler shelves and floors need sanitizing at least once a week. Sanitize back-stock coolers once a month. Set up regular servicing schedules for your coolers so compressors are vacuumed at least every six months for efficient operation and to eliminate any Botrytis spores that may be clinging to coils. Keep in mind that we should work as cleanly with flowers as we do with food to insure top-quality products for our floral customers! Everything we do on the front end, results in better (longer) vase life at the back end – when the blooms are in the consumer’s hands! Proper handling allows you to under-promise and over-deliver!! Happy Spring! |
