### Gladiolus bouquets: why the box stands up A gladiolus stem grows away from gravity, and it keeps doing so after cutting. Lay a spike flat overnight and the tip curls upwards into a hook by morning. Nothing straightens it out again. That is why these stems travel and wait standing, and why a long horizontal box is the wrong packaging for them however neatly it fits into a van. The same applies at home. A spike left lying on a kitchen counter while somebody hunts for a vase starts to bend within hours, and the bend arrives well before anyone thinks to check for it. > "The hooked tip is the one fault we cannot fix at the door. If it lay down, it lay down, and the only honest answer is to send another spike." > JFLOO florist #### The daily job Care is undemanding but not quite zero. Change the water every couple of days and re-trim the stem at an angle, because a thick stem clouds a vase faster than a thin one does. Strip any leaf that would sit below the waterline. Pick off the spent flowers at the bottom each morning. They go slimy and drag their neighbours down with them, and this single habit does more for the look of a spike than everything else in the routine put together. Keep the vase away from the fruit bowl as well. Ripening fruit gives off ethylene, and the upper buds answer by dropping before they open, which on a flower sold half-closed costs you most of what you paid for. The row opens from the bottom upwards, a bloom or two a day, so what anybody is looking after here is a flower still in progress. Every habit above is aimed at the same thing: getting the colour further up the stem before the spike runs out of energy. #### What the island adds Delivery along the west coast runs 90 to 180 minutes, from Patong and Kata through Karon, Kamala and Bang Tao to Surin, with separate windows for villas, marinas and airport runs. We work 9 AM to 10 PM. Between May and October, and on the hill roads after dark, we add route time. Boxes go out tall instead of long, and they are braced against the corners. A gladiolus that slides in transit does not break. It leans, and by the time it arrives the lean has set. Humid air at 25 to 33 °C speeds the row open. That is useful when a spike has to be in colour by tomorrow and awkward when it has to hold a week, so we ask which of the two the order is for. The same warmth makes the fruit bowl problem faster, since the fruit ripens in the same air. Airport and marina runs keep their own windows for a practical reason. A spike waiting in a car for a delayed arrival is a spike waiting in the heat, and both of those cost more here than the distance does. Orders start from 2200 THB, and payment goes by card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PromptPay, bank transfer or cash in baht. Anniversaries and small weddings are where most of these end up. A ceremony wants height at the edges of a space, and three or five spikes give it that where a round arrangement would need a table to sit on. Gladiolus bouquets in Phuket go to villas more often than to hotel rooms, and height is the reason. The spike wants free space above the vase, and a room with a low table and things already standing on it makes the whole arrangement look like an accident. Tell us where the vase will stand and whether anybody is there each morning to take the bottom flowers off. If the answer to the second is no, we will send fewer spikes and send them further open, because a week of unattended opening is not what this flower does well.