How To Deadhead And Why You Should
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Taking a pair of shears and lopping off the heads of your flowers doesn’t exactly seem like a great idea for any starter gardener or plant parent. But deadheading is such a vital and important aspect of plant care that not many people cover when introducing others into the hobby. So, what exactly is deadheading?
Deadheading is when you remove the dying or dead sections of your plants that are no longer being sustained or have lived out their usefulness. When both annual and perennial flowers begin to bloom, their main purpose is to propagate to continue their generational lines. Once the blooms of these flowers are spent after pollination, the plant uses its resources instead to focus on seeding and the blooms begin to die.
However, by deadheading off these dying blooms, we are enabling the plant to use its energy to either produce more blooms or focus on producing seeds or fruit. Besides giving your plants more potential for growth, you are also cleaning up the appearance of your garden from unsightly brown, dead foliage.
Now how do we begin the process of deadheading your plants? Pop some earphones on, grab a cold glass of water and put on your sunhat and flower clippers as we dive right into this simple and fun task.
First off, you are going to need to narrow down what needs to be cut. Flowers with single blooms on a stem can be easier to tell from multi-blossomed stemmed flowers like geraniums. When deadheading something like a geranium or salvia, it is best to clip blooms that have faded at least by 70%.
Next, you will want to find where you need to cut. While this does depend on your plant, there is a basic rule of thumb you can follow: Cut your spent flowers and stems back to ¼ inch above a new lateral flower, lateral leaf, or bud at a 45-degree angle. For some smaller gentler flowers, you can also just use your fingers to pinch off the area you wish to remove. Don’t forget to bring a container with you to place all your clippings into to make clean up easy.
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