I Tried 3 Methods to Keep Flowers Fresh, and the Winner Surprised Me

Confession time: my green thumb is completely nonexistent. I struggle to keep the beautiful flower bouquets I bring home alive for as long as I can remember.

So, when I stumbled upon a video with not one, but three different viral methods to keep flowers fresh, I was immediately interested in trying them out.

As someone who spends countless hours scrolling for work, I know some TikTok home hacks don’t go to plan and some are absolutely game-changing— and decided to put these to the test to see if any would work in real life.

I found the three methods to keep flowers fresh in a video by @thekwendyhome, where she documents each method side-by-side in a time-lapse: Sprite and bleach, a penny, and a pin-prick hack.

Wendy found the pin-prick method to work best on her tulips, so I was excited to see if the results would be the same with my roses.

The Setup

I wanted to keep everything as consistent as possible in each vase, so I bought two bouquets of supermarket flowers and divided them evenly between four clear vases.

Next, I labeled each vase with which hack I would be using and filled them up with water, taking care to keep water levels even.

Finally, I cleared a windowsill to make enough room for all four vases so they would also all be getting the same amount of sunlight. I added a bit of flower food to my control vase and got to work setting up each hack.

The Hacks

The first hack I tried was the most eyebrow-raising: putting a capful of Sprite and a capful of bleach into the vase. This is meant to give the plants sugar with the soda (similarly to flower food) and prevent microbes from growing in the water with the bleach.

The second was the pin-prick method, which was the winner in Wendy’s inspiration video. This hack involves using a sewing needle or push pin to create a hole through each flower’s stem, about an inch below the bloom.

The third method I tried was the penny hack—and this took the most time to set up. Wendy mentions taking care when selecting your penny, as newer ones don’t contain enough copper to keep fungi from growing.

Wendy also said if she were to try these hacks again she would clean her penny first, so I found a penny from 1989, I made sure to do just that by soaking my penny in hot water, baking soda, and vinegar for 15 minutes before washing it off with soapy water.

The Progress

I ran my experiment for one week, and I’ll be honest: for the first two days, I didn’t see any difference in my bouquets.

On day three, I spotted that the roses had opened up in all the vases besides the Sprite and bleach one.

Day four was when I started to notice some significant differences: the Sprite and bleach roses had started to shrivel up, and the leaves were curled up. I also spotted a difference in water clarity, with the control vase water appearing to be murky while the others were clear.

This continued through days five and six, with the Sprite and bleach roses dying, the control water getting murkier— plus, the pin prick roses starting to droop. The control and penny roses continued to stand strong, with soft leaves and healthy-looking baby’s breath.

The Final Verdict

On day seven, it was time to compare each bouquet for the final time. It was initially tough to determine a winner, but fourth place was evident: the Sprite and bleach hack was unfortunately a failure.

While the other three vases still had healthy, fresh-looking blooms, the Sprite and bleach one’s roses were shriveled-up and never opened. The leaves were brittle to the touch, and the stems even had visible signs of bleach.

Surprisingly, third place ended up going to the pin-prick method—despite it being the clear winner for Wendy in the original video. Although the vase’s water stayed clear through the week, the roses looked fairly healthy, and the leaves were pretty soft to the touch, I noticed the flowers hadn’t opened up as much as my first and second-place vases, and they had drooped the most.

The most open roses were in the control group, which only had flower food added—although the water was much murkier in the control vase than in any of the others and the bottoms of the stems were starting to brown—which means the winning viral method for keeping flowers fresh was the penny hack.

What I’d Do Next Time

I would recommend cleaning a penny with baking soda and vinegar before every use. I think it made the biggest difference in allowing my penny to work its anti-fungal magic, and was the reason my final rankings didn’t exactly match Wendy’s video.

However, I did see similar results to her when it came to the Sprite and bleach. I would discourage trying that hack altogether.

The drooping pin-prick roses were the final big surprise, although after doing further research, I discovered this method works best on tulips and other varieties with hollow stems. It allows the blooms to get more air. Roses have solid stems, so this may have impacted the way the hack turned out.

When I buy my next bouquet, I’ll definitely be dropping a penny into the vase again— but next time, I’ll try adding the flower food as well to see if the blooms open up any more. If I bring home any hollow-stemmed varieties, I’ll be combining the pin-prick and penny methods as well.