Deadheading and Trimming Plants
Have you noticed your plants looking a little overgrown and out of shape? These plants most likely need a good trim to get their focus back into growing in the right direction. Have you noticed that your flowering plants are done flowering but the growing season is far from over yet? Deadheading your flowers can provoke additional growth and flowering during the same season. I want to tell you more about deadheading and trimming your plants in this article.

Posted Wednesday, April 5, 2006

Flowering plants require regular checking, trimming, and occasionally deadheading when bearing flowers so that your plants will produce as many flowers as possible. Looking at your flowering plants, do you see flower heads that are hanging over and that are turning black or brown? These are flower heads that need to be cut off, trimmed off, or even just picked off. This is what is known as deadheading. Deadheading flowers gets rid of the dead flowers on any flowering plant.

Why do you have to cut off and pick off flowers that are already dead? There are a few reasons to deadhead flowers. Flowers that are already dead will promote the dying of other flowers on the plant because the plant feels it is time to cut back on production of flowers. When you deadhead a flower, you are picking off the dead flowers, and the plant will work to produce more. This often gives you another glorious look of your plant that otherwise you might have missed out on.

To deadhead a flower, you are going to pinch off the flower by holding the stem firmly in your one hand, and then pull the flower with the other. You can also use a pair of scissors and trim the flowers off easily without hurting the plant. One type of flower that you can work with and deadhead to promote additional flowers is the azalea bush. Mums in the summer and in the fall can be deadheaded to promote additional blooming as well.

Trimming and Pruning

All types of plants will grow wildly and out of shape when they are left on their own year after year. Some plants will grow out of shape and need a trim when they are growing towards the sun, when they are restricted by other plants, and when they are growing in containers.

Trimming plants is easily done with a pair of sharp scissors, shears, or pruners, depending on how thick the stem is that you are working with. Never cut more than a few inches off a plant at any given time, when you are pruning and trimming. Only cutting a few inches off will help the plant focus on growing thicker in the area that it is not cut, and this trimming will give it more of a shape that fits the area that it is growing into.