I have a 'black thumb', but this $15 plant food helps me keep cut bouquets alive

Confession time: I love having fresh-cut flowers in the house... but I have what some folks might call a "black thumb." I am definitely not a gardener, and I'm seriously terrible at keeping plants alive. (Just ask the mummified-looking potted plant outside my front door!) But the little splashes of life and color that cut flowers add to the home are worth the effort to me — and luckily, I've discovered a way to keep them alive that even my deathly touch cannot impede. It's FloraLife Fresh-Cut Flower Food, and each $15 bottle of this magic potion helps me encourage a plethora of vased flora to thrive.

FloraLife Fresh-Cut Flower Food

$15

Each single bottle of this plant food generates 100 cups, or 25 quarts, of Floralife solution when added to water.

$15 at Amazon

Floralife is specially meant to help nourish fresh-cut flowers, using a multi-nutrient formula that's easily added to vases via water. All you need to do is trim your flower stems an inch, add two teaspoons per one quart (or four cups) of water, and place your flowers in its vase or container with the water. Each 8-oz. bottle makes 100 cups, or 25 quarts, of vase solution, so you'll get a lot of use out of it even if you're filling your house with flowers!

I began my great experiment on August 29, the Thursday before Labor Day weekend. I figured this would really put Floralife to the test — I would set up some fresh-cut flowers with plenty of water and plant food, and wouldn't be able to check on it again after the weekend was through, since I was heading out of state for the holiday. So, I grabbed a pretty mini-bouquet of hydrangeas at the grocery store, trimmed the stems as directed, added the right amount of Floralife to the vase, and filled it up generously with water. Then, I bid adieu to my flowers until Tuesday.

When I arrived back home on Tuesday September 3, I was happy with what I found. The flowers had done incredibly well, even despite being left alone all weekend in a variably-lit kitchen (with no climate control, either).

They had obviously sucked up a lot of the water I'd left them in (the vase was almost full when we began), and the leaves were a touch wilted at the corners. But the flowers looked just as fresh and lively as they had when I'd left five days prior.

I decided to keep the test going for another week, and this time I would just refill the water and add a mere splash of the Floralife to the new refreshment, along with trimming the stems another inch. Otherwise, though, I decided to just let the flowers do their thing and see how it went.

Folks: They still did great! The final pictures below were taken on Monday, September 9. The leaves are a bit more crispy on the edges, and there are maybe one or two little petal bunches on the flowers themselves that have wilted, but the hydrangeas obviously don't look much worse for wear than they did when I first got them on August 29.

I'm not the only Floralife super-fan — plenty of Amazon shoppers also rave about how the plant food helps them keep flowers fresh and vibrant over extended periods of time.

"Works almost too well," marveled a reviewer. "I bought this magical potion to see if it could extend the life of my (then weekly) fresh-cut flowers and BOY, let me tell you, I'm on day 17 of this specific bunch and they're still going strong. I do change out the water, clip away any dead flowers or leaves, and add the flower food every three to four days ... but the flowers are in perfect condition nearly three full weeks after purchase."

Another user shared, "[This] dissolves better than the powder packets that come with flowers and keeps them alive longer! Hobby floral designer here, and I always use this!"

"This flower food is fabulous. The flowers last twice as long," noted a fan. "Usually, after five or six days, I recut the stems and put in new water and flower food. This really helps a lot. ... This Floralife food lasts so much longer than what I used previously. It's well worth the money, as I don't have to buy flowers as often."

One shopper said that, while they found Floralife to be "a bit pricey," they did feel that "it does keep my flowers a few days longer than usual, which keeps me from buying flowers more often."

The reviews quoted above reflect the most recent versions at the time of publication.