Helpful Hint Fridays: Deadheading in the Garden

 Hey there!  How is your summer going?  Mine is going well, although I could do with some better weather but, what is the use in complaining?  Today I am starting a new series for the summer, Helpful Hint Fridays.  I am kind of excited about it! We will see how it goes and determine whether or not to continue in the fall.  The idea for this series started one day after visiting with my daughter, Amanda, and daughter-in-law, Jessica.  I thought they knew what I was talking about when I mentioned "deadheading" in terms of spent flowers in container gardens and the garden in general.  As it turns out, they did not really know how to do it correctly.  That got me thinking.  "Maybe other people are doing it in the wrong way, as well."

I will warn you in advance that these photos are not pretty.  Deadheading is not a pretty business, but it will produce beauty in your garden and is well worth doing.  I will guarantee it.

So, we will start by looking at what happens to those beautiful flowers as they start to die on your plant. See the brown blossoms below?  Those flowers are done blooming and are on to the next stage of their lives.  They are producing babies (seeds to be exact).  They are in their life cycle so as to make sure we have flowers for next year and many years to come.  However, that is not what you want them to do at this point in the summer. We'll let the growers take care of that business. You want your plant to have as many blooms as possible, for as long as possible.  This is where deadheading comes in.

The next photo shows you how my daughters were incorrectly deadheading.  Again, below is a flower beginning to die.  It does not look pretty and is taking away from the visual effect you want in your garden.

My daughters were pulling the flowers alone away from the stem.

This is a different flower but, you can see where only the flower has been pulled off.  This method will work if your only goal is to remove spent flowers and nothing else. It will add to the visual effect in your planter...for a while. If you want your plant to continue to bloom and have multiple blossoms, you should deadhead in another way.

Do you see the pod-shape thing in the middle of the star-shaped petals in the photo? That is what is in the middle of where the flower blossom sits.  That pod is where seeds are forming.

Here is another example.  If you were to leave this pod and others on your plant, the plant would think that its job is done and would not set forth more buds to make more flowers.  Eventually your plant would be covered with many pods and only a few flowers.

Here is a seed pods that contains seeds that have matured.  It has turned brown.  The best thing to do with those pods is to snip it off right below the petals encircling the pod.  I use scissors.  Others use their fingertips.  Either way is fine.

As you can see here, I simply snipped off the whole flower head. Eventually blossoms will grow from this stem or slightly below.

In the end, you want your plants producing a plethora of blossoms throughout the whole summer.  Deadheading is one of the ways to make this happen.  Here, I have been deadheading as often as I can, and the plant looks super healthy.  Continuing to do this throughout the summer will help to make your gardens look their best.

I hope you have enjoyed this first installment of Helpful Hint Fridays.  

Please stop by to see what next week brings :).