Hi I was reading the favorite rose topic and was wondering what you guys meant by the term deadheading. How do you do it and why? I have got so much to learn. LOL Thanks for your help, Amanda
Hey Newgardener, dead-heading is a simple task which takes a few minutes however adds days and sometimes weeks to your flowering display. If you've never dead-headed before here's how go about it...... Firstly keep a watchful eye on your flowering plants, paying close attention to blooms that are past their best. Once a flower has started to fade remove it from the plant with a quick snip from your secateurs, alternatively knip it off with your thumb and forefinger. When doing this try to remove just the spent flower leaving the new buds beneath intact. Your beds and borders now look neater due to the lack of fading blooms, but how else has this deadheading process helped us? Well by removing the spent flowers we have prevented the plant from setting seed which if it did would trigger the production of a hormone which causes flowering to shut down completely. So by our slight tinkering with Mother Nature we can often force the plant to put its energies into a second flush of flower production instead of seed production. Bear in mind that your planting should have a plentiful supply of nutrients to give a secondary flowering. Hope this helps, GPI.
I just take off the dead/dying flower heads. I pinch them off right under the flower. I do this to my roses so I get more roses later. My bushes will have more energy to rebloom instead of creating hips (seed pods) Depending on the plant, sometimes I dead head my flower plants...sometimes not.If the buds cluster closely together, I dont. I dont want to risk damaging the other buds or blooms. I dead head the old flowers/roses because they will either drop their petals to litter the yard or turn brown. I also pinch off all the yellowing and browning leaves. I have nothing but green! LOL But here lately with all the storms moving through I havent gotten out there to do it in like a week. So I have my work cut out for me when the weather calms down!
