Toothpicks never worked for me; maybe b'c y'all had short narrow, spindly,starved underweight ones while I had BIG ones that could stare at a toothpick and laugh out loud.
I'm serious about the toothpicks which is why I went to twigs and similar before I settled on plastic straws, which stumped even my big ones since they could not encircle the stems with the increased bulk of the straws.
Actually I started out with collars, both cardboard and aluminumfoil, and bothwere uselss.
As is oft said, whatever works for a person works so stick with it,no pun intended.
Carolyn