Flower Care Calculator

The calculator treats 65°F as the optimal display temperature and applies a factor of 0.7 for every 10°F above it, compounding continuously with the exact temperature difference rather than in fixed 10° blocks. That mirrors real post-harvest research: warmer air speeds up a cut flower's respiration and water loss, so even a few degrees above optimal meaningfully shortens how long a bouquet stays fresh.

Each care factor in this calculator applies independently as its own multiplier, so skipping flower food removes the 50% life extension but doesn't cancel out the water-change benefit — frequent water changes (every 2 days or less) still add their own 25% on top of whatever else you're doing. The factors compound together, so any single good practice still helps even without the others.

The calculator estimates roughly one cup (8 ounces) of water for every three stems, rounding up to the nearest full cup so a partial group of stems still gets a full increment of water. It then converts that same water volume to quarts to determine how many flower-food packets you need, since food packets are dosed at one per quart.

"Days lost to poor care" compares your adjusted vase life against the base life with flower food applied but none of the other factors, so it captures the combined drag from every negative condition together — heat, sunlight, ethylene, infrequent water changes — not just one at a time. Because the factors multiply rather than add, stacking several unfavorable conditions at once compounds the loss faster than adding up each factor's percentage individually would suggest.