Maximize Your Flower Garden's Potential: Dead Head Spent Blooms

A painful process to many new gardeners and even some experienced gardeners is the act of dead heading flowers. Dead heading is the name given to the removal of faded or withered blooms on flowering plants in your garden. Once the rationale for dead heading is understood, no sincere flower gardener would omit this vital step in gardening care.

One reason to dead head your spent flower blooms is simple: aesthetics. Once the flower begins to fade in color or turn dry and brown, it is no longer a thing of beauty. In a garden where many similar types of flowering plants are grouped together, it is likely that most of the flowers will have opened at much the same time, meaning those same flowers will be fading together. A cluster of spent flowers will draw the eye, spoiling the beauty intended in the grouping.

Yet another reason to dead head your fading flowers is that in doing so, you are actually extending the reproductive life cycle of the plant. When the flowers die off, the plant makes seeds. Once seeds have been produced by the plant, it will no longer flower. By snipping or pinching off the old blooms, the reproductive cycle of many plants will result in more blooms or a second flowering in the same season.

Dead heading your flowers will also allow each plant to use the energy it would otherwise spend in making seeds to grow more vigorously and produce more blooms.

How do you dead head the tired blooms? It will depend on the type of plant and whether there are single flowers, clusters of flowers, etc. Single flowers can be snipped one at a time. Clusters of flowers may be easier to dead head by snipping off an entire stem or bract.

For roses, always snip above the first set of five leaves beneath the bloom.

In dead heading your flowering plants, it is advisable to snip not only the withered flower, but also its support stem. This will prevent the plant from wasting valuable energy on a stem that will no longer have a function.

Resources: Magnolia Garden http://www.magnoliatreeearthcenter.org/flowers/deadheading-flowers-why-and-how-to-deadhead-spent-blooms

The Gardener's Rake http://thegardenersrake.com/deadheading-flowers-why-should-i-flower-garden-advice