In winter, when fresh flowers are very expensive, and you really want to please yourself with something beautiful, you can decorate the apartment with bouquets and compositions from various dried flowers, dried or forcing branches.
To create such bouquets, dried flowers are well suited, for example, ammobium, acroclinium, helichrysum, gomphrena, tumbleweed, physalis, cereals, for example, feather grass, maned barley, various fruits of annual and perennial flowers. Often also used are cattail, tansy, sycamore, sandy cumin and other plants.
Volumetric dried flowers can also be added to the composition, but they must be prepared in advance, otherwise they will lose their shape and color. They are harvested in hot, dry weather, in the afternoon, at the very beginning of flowering. For the preparation, a cardboard box sent with paper is used. A 2 cm box is filled with a mixture of washed calcined sand and borax 2 to 1. Then the stems are cut short, placed in a box next to the flowers (heads down) and fill all the voids, including the gaps between the petals. The box is tightly closed and placed in a ventilated cool place for 7-10 days. Remove flowers carefully. In the bottom of the box, you can make a couple of holes so that the sand spills out. Then attach separately dried stems to the buds.
Compositions from dry branches
You need to preserve the branches in early autumn, it is best to take branches of oak, mahonia, iris or maple. Barberry and cranberries also look good.
Carefully inspect the selected branches, remove all unsightly, broken shoots, rinse the branches in warm water. With cut shoots, split the ends by 4-6 cm with a sharp knife. Then the branches are placed in a vessel and the ends are immersed to a depth of 6-8 cm in a mixture of glycerin (1/3) and water (2/3).
For 3 weeks, the leaves gradually change their color, become dark green, maroon or brown, but retain elasticity. For conservation, it is better to choose a cool place, but if the room is warm, the solution must be changed 2 times. At the same time, the sections are also updated under water (the entire segment that is in a mixture of glycerin and water is removed), the end of the shoot is split again.
Wall compositions decorated on a piece of bark, birch bark, tinder fungus, driftwood, etc. look original. Dry plants and branches are attached with plasticine, thin wire, and sometimes with glue.
Elegant bouquets with "snow-covered" living branches of conifers. To do this, crush the foam on a grater and sprinkle it with shoots, previously lightly smeared with glue, like snow.
Salt branches are also used in winter bouquets. It's easy to cook them. Pour salt into hot water (1 to 2), when the solution cools down a little, shoots are immersed in it. After a day or two, branches with salt crystals must be carefully pulled out and dried.
Bouquets of distilled flowers
No matter how good dry plants are, but alive, all the same, it is more pleasant. The room looks especially elegant if in winter or early spring it is decorated with compositions with forcing branches of trees and shrubs.
Branches are cut not earlier than the second half of December. Quickly (after 3-6 days) shoots of hazel, poplar, alder, aspen, larch bloom somewhat more slowly (18-25 days) - branches of chokeberry, black currant, bird cherry, cherry, Japanese quince. It is better to cut an apple tree, a pear, a plum no earlier than mid-January. The closer to spring they are taken, the shorter the forcing time. You can use branches after pruning trees and shrubs.
You need to choose shoots of a beautiful silhouette, but you can carefully bend them yourself. Branches brought into the room from frost are tightly wrapped in paper and kept in a cool place for 1 hour for gradual thawing. Then they are washed with water, all broken or excess shoots are removed, the ends are cut obliquely under water, split by 4-6 cm along the length of the stem and placed in a vessel with water at room temperature to a depth of 6-8 cm.
If you need to speed up the blooming of the branches, then they are first placed for 12 hours in warm water, and then put in colder water. It is very useful to spray the branches daily with water. Change it and trim the ends (by 3-6 cm) once a week. A vase or jug with plants should be kept away from central heating radiators.
In order for the buds to wake up faster, after spraying, a plastic bag is put on the branches and tied at the bottom at the base of the vessel, this creates a more humid microclimate.
The article was prepared for the site shop-ultra.ru.
