Welcome to the first in a series of tips & tricks I use everyday in my floral design business. The first series I’m calling “pantry staples”.

We all know the feeling of buying beautiful blooms only to get them home, arranged and looking dead within a day’s time (looking at you, hydrangea). It’s frustrating to deal with such finicky stems, but there is a trick that can help extend your flowers’ vase life tremendously, and you might even already have it in your spice pantry. Enter: Alum powder. I recently spoke with Hugh Metcalf with Living Etc magazine about the florists’ staple tool for thirsty stems prone to wilting. To read the entire article, click here. Otherwise, excepts below:

However, speaking to a professional flower grower, I learned a great secret about how to keep these blooms alive. 'As a flower-farmer, I’d love to share a tip that has saved me many finicky cut-hydrangea blooms, in particular,' says Meredith Bishop, founder of Bloom & Beauty, and it involves something you can buy for less than $5 at a grocery store.

'One, always cut in the coolest part of the day (morning or evening) straight into water,' Meredith says — something that applies if you're growing your own hydrangea, not getting them from the store. 'Next, scrape a bit (1/2” or less) of bark off the stem at the cut point. Finally, dip the cut end into alum powder and replace in fresh water,' she says.

So what exactly is alum powder? 'It's a spice in the onion family found in the spice aisle of most grocery stores,' Meredith explains, but why does it help your hydrangeas last longer?

Turns out alum is a pickling spice- the same one you might use to make your freshly canned cucumbers turn into crunchy pickles. Alum acts on the stems ability to take up water and hold onto it, increasing its “crunch”, if you will.

Alum powder isn’t a good idea for hydrangeas only. In fact, one of my favorite times to use it is when I forage branches in the spring or fall. Anything with a woodier stem is prone to dehydration (usually perennials such as viburnum, roses, smokebush, lilac as examples), and alum powder can really make a world of difference in keeping an arrangement in peak form. Give it a try on your next grocery run!