I'm always finding ways to be eco friendly and sustainable, and honestly, sometimes I'm just looking for something easy and budget friendly as well and this hack is all of the above.

Planted florist arrangement of house plants and orchids by Gorgeous and Green

I create a lot of planted arrangements that include indoor plants with nice shiny leaves.  And these leaves always have water spots, calcium deposits and fertilizer spots that aren't that pretty.

I looked at that shiny leaf spray at the florist supply store and it weirded me out, plus it smells chemically and apart from being an aerosol, I'm sure it contains some ingredients I don't really want to be spraying around or breathing.

So, I started just wiping leaves down, and found that it helped a little, but most of the calcium deposits stuck around.  And then I remembered my mom telling me about what her mom did, and showed me how I could use milk to wipe down the leaves of our plants and it made them nice and shiny.  And I realized, theres a secret ingredient missing here...

olive oil and water on a rag to clean leaves

Fat, or oil.

So, I starting dripping a little bit of olive oil on a cloth with water and using that to wipe down shiny leaves, and Voila! Nice and Shiny. Nice and Natural. Organic materials and it doesn't seem to interrupt the off gassing of the leaves, I'm guessing because it's such a small amount and because it's olive oil, something that breaks down naturally.

Using a little olive oil and water to clean houseplant leaves in a plant arrangement

Using olive oil and water on a rag to clean an orchid's leaves in a florist arrangement

So, THIS IS MY HACK.  I've shared it with a few florists, and I'm hoping more start avoiding that weird aerosol and start using this natural oil and water method.  Mad props if you have one of those olive oil misters, since that would create tiny droplets on a wet rag, that would work well to not completely saturate leaves.

florist hack, use olive oil and water on a rag to clean household plants and orchid leaves and make them shine

 

I promise, more of my natural hacks coming down the sustainable floristry pipeline...

 

Comentarios

Ro dijo:

This is quite informative thank you for sharing!

TONI dijo:

WHAT A GOOD IDEA—-
another great use for olive oil—
cook with it -
use a little on your face and other parts of you body
brighten up your plants-etc.

TONI

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