Experts Say Watering Your Flowering Plants With Sprite Could Work Wonders in an Unexpected Way

There was a time when people used plants to achieve transcendental states. Cults of dummy healers, mad psychics, and nefarious rulers quaffed goblets of spirited drinks crafted from pressed poppies, kneaded hawthorns, and crushed raw weed of hot white cannabis ash. Even Cleopatra used the intoxicating juice of squeezed belladonna berries to electrify the power of her eye retinas. The era of these booze-lapping humans is long gone. Plants don’t allow themselves to be pressed and crushed anymore.

Instead, the plants and flowers of the modern day like to glam up in their party hats and guzzle up glasses of whiskey, vodka, gin, Sprite, tequila, and all those club sodas. As luck would have it, plant doctors these days say that these zippy beverages are actually good for their health. Researchers have found that getting plants “drunk” can actually be a good thing for them, according to The Cool Down.

Business Insider says that most cut flowers can last anywhere from seven to twelve days if properly cared for. While plants like roses, lilies, freesia, daisies, and sunflowers can stay fresh for longer, others like hyacinths, lilacs, daffodils, ranunculus, and tulips are notorious for wilting and dying only within a few days. This tendency paves the way to disappointing situations, such as when a person is forced to toss away the bouquet their partner gifted them recently on Valentine’s Day or a special vase of flowers that someone’s grandma brought from her garden. In scenarios like these, the trick is to get your flowers boozed up with cans and glasses of citrus-flavored sodas like Sprite, 7Up, or vodka.

Around the fall of 2024, an NYC-based Australian floral designer, Lori-Lee Kofsky (@lorileefloral), conducted an experiment. She applied different ingredients, including aspirin, copper pennies, sugar, "Sprite plus bleach," on her plants to see which ones helped the most in prolonging her flowers’ lives. The winner turned out to be the "Sprite plus bleach" combo. And it’s not just a hilarious coincidence.

Susan Han, a professor in the plant, soil, and insect science department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, explained to Scientific American that this trick works because these beverages are high in sugar and plants need this sugar for preparing their food in addition to water. The website explains that cut flowers, typically, lose touch with their roots, which disrupts their essential food production mechanism. When a gardener pours these citrusy or clubby sodas on the plants, the water immersing them becomes slightly acidic. This “acidic” water tends to travel up the spines of the stems more easily than the basic or neutral water, hence keeping the flowers hydrated and fresh for longer.

William Miller, a professor of horticulture at Cornell University, added that in addition to sugar and acidic water, a spoonful of bleach does wonders for the plant. While the mixture of sugar and water spurs bacterial growth, the addition of bleach kills these bacteria without damaging the flowers, which is why Kofsky added the bleach. Han recommended “a three-to-one ratio of water to soda, along with a few drops of bleach to kill the bacteria.” Ultimately, flowers want to have some fun too. So, pop out those bottles of cool sodas fizzing with zippy bubbles and let these plant beauties grog up on all that booze.