Your Flowering Plants Keep on Blooming as Long as Possible

How to Deadhead Your Flowering Plants So They'll Keep on Blooming as Long as Possible

Let’s face it: even the name of this work is scary. But destroying your plants is not as bad as it sounds; This means cutting the flowers that have been spent. This not only helps keep your garden tidy but also encourages your plants to create new flowers instead of expending energy to produce seeds. Some gardeners are a little nervous about plucking parts of their plants, but if you don’t really start to wonder, it’s hard to damage or kill a plant. So, when the flowers on your flowering plants are fading, browning, curling, or otherwise unattractive, pull out your garden scissors and start cutting off the spent flowers.

Which plants should be destroyed?

There is often a hint of what plants can die and how to leave them alone. If the flowers stay on the plant and turn brown and ugly, you can start deadheading to clear the mess.

Plants with many small flowers

These include coreopsis, fever, golden margaritas, lobelia, sweet Alice, little moms, potentilla, flax, aster, kelardia, and azalea. Cutting one flower at a time can take a long time, so instead use grass blades to tackle the task in sections. Get as many flower stalks as possible. Avoid buds, but do not worry about taking a little leaf with flowers; It will grow back.

Shrubs with large flowers

These include large marigolds, summer phlox, astilbe, pioneer, purple cauliflower, black-eyed succulents, daisies, annual and perennial salvia, petunias, and zinnia. Scissors with scissors ($ 26, The Home Depot), also known as Sectares or Pruning Snips, cut each flower individually so that the stem is large enough so that it does not stick badly. Okay (and in the case of plants with desirable legs like petunias) it is better to remove the leaves a little.

Roses

Not to be confused with pruning, making the roses deadhead is to take only the minimum amount of stem to remove the flower. Lean down towards the center of the rose bush at a 45-degree angle. The cut should be located at the point where it occurs after the first pair of leaves and above the outer stem (the stem away from the center of the plant).

Flowers long-stemmed on tall stems

These include daisies, larkspur, foxgloves, hostas, tulips, daffodils, oriental poppies, peonies, and irises. Cut each flower by hand with scissors as close as possible to where the stem leaves meet.

No need to die

Although many plants benefit from death, not all of them need to bloom. You can also find self-cleaning varieties of plants that traditionally require deadheading; Spent flowers will fall off naturally and the plant will produce more flowers without any trimming from you.

Meadows

'Autumn Happiness'

Melampodium

Impatient

Most flowering vines

Most landscapes

Crocus and other "small" spring-flowering bulbs

Whispers flower (Tornia)

Other ways to extend the flowers

Deadheading is a way to extend the flowering season; There are other tricks you can use to prolong the color.

Set up pot annuities in the garden and move them to areas that need an immediate color lift.

Plant bulbs bloom in late summer and autumn from early summer to mid.

Water deeply every three to four days while the young plants are stabilizing themselves, then reduce to weekly watering. Later, when the soil is dry, water as needed.

Feed perennials monthly (from spring to summer) with low nitrogen but high phosphorus fertilizer. Feed annually with a balanced (5-10-5) organic fertilizer every three weeks.

Weed out unwanted plants so the flowers don’t have to compete for nutrients.

Propagate by dividing existing plants or by collecting seeds from one or two withered flowers. Being overweight will add to the special!