I use it fresh, but my market stand is in the shade in a cool spot, so it holds up fairly well. On a broiling hot day, it wilts. As you've noticed, it wilts so badly it looks as though it could NEVER recover, which does make selling it difficult. I'm lucky to have quite a few regular customers who know from experience that it perks back up. I've reassured them all in the past, when they bought a bouquet with it looking dead, so they have found out for themselves that it recovers. Sometimes I'll just remove it from whatever bouquets are left, once it starts to wilt.

I use the same preservative water on it that I use on everything. It invariably wilts when cut but recovers within an hour or two in the cool house, in preservative water.

Once it gets to blooming stage, it doesn't wilt as quickly, or at least the blooming branches don't. At that point, I stop using it because it drops so much pollen. That's the point at which lots of people dry it. I don't.

Jeanne

Sweet Annie is a late season filler for bouquets. It shouldn't be harvested before the seeds start to form. Otherwise, it will do exactly what you have experienced tellme. I don't know what size markets others on this forum participate in; but, our markets are large. At times there are 20+ other vendors with flowers. We wouldn't take a chance on Sweet Annie wilting because it has been cut too soon. We have a reputation to maintain for high quality flowers at market. We are the flower farmers and we promote this shamelessly. It's one of our marketing strategies. We also never carry over any flowers from one market to another -- even if the next market is the following day. These are our standards. Anyway, we harvest Sweet Annie in September, and use it in aster, mum, zinnia, and sunflower bouquets. People always associate the scent of Sweet Annie with autumn. There are alot of other nice greens which can be used for bouquets during the summer months.

Thanks for the alert about pollen, Jeanne. I have a couple of buyers who worry alot about pollen in their cut flowers. This week I cut some sweet annie with well-developed buds and took a bucketfull to market. (All my flowers stand in preservative for 12+ hours before market.) This time it stood well for three hours on the asphalt under an umbrella; then some wilted. I am still not ready to include it in bouquets (or it's not ready for me) because I would have shame if it didn't present well - as would any of us!
When your words come out of your fingers instead of your mouth, you have the opportunity to reconsider what you have said and the way you have said it. And certainly it is tricky to communicate the inflection you intended.

I have a basic growing question...do you direct seed this or use plugs? I can't seem to get it to grow! Or maybe its my soil, clay and hot...but, we have wild carrot and queen anne's lace everywhere growing wild...

Thanks,
Wendy