Frugal Gardening - Benefits of Removing Dead Blooms From Your Garden Plants

At the beginning of winter all the bulbs start to grow and eventually the blooms explode in a wonderful array of color. After the bulbs burst into life you can look forward to spring and the abundance of more beautiful blooms in our garden. To keep these flowers looking at their best we need to take a walk down the paths and look for wilting, fading blooms as these will detract from the many other new buds opening in full flower.

We need to behead them, well I do not mean to sound too blood thirsty; all we need to do is remove the dying flower heads. This can be done by nipping them off with your fingertips or for the stronger stemmed flowers it will be best to snip them off with a pair of secateurs. In some cases you can remove the old stem back to where it shot from as long as there are no more buds coming of that same stem. Take care not to break the whole plant in the process as some plants are more fragile than others.

Bloom removal or dead heading the blooms will also prevent the blooms from seed production.  If the blooms were allowed to produce seeds this would take the goodness from the plants and reduce the flowering process. So you are actually doing the flowering process a favor.  At the end of the flowering season you could leave the blooms on the plants if you wish to save some of the seeds for next season.

I believe that roses would be one of the most prevalent to benefit from this to guarantee another array of blooms before the rosehips develop (did you know that there are good uses for the rosehips, they are used for health remedies and in soups) but that’s another story.

Most perennial plants will benefit from deadheading or removal of their blooms. Some of these are Zinnias, Pansies, Cosmos, and Violas. In fact many other smaller plants will probably thank you for this help, which will allow them to bloom again. It would be a good time to give these plants another dose of fertilizer at the same time to encourage more flowers.

Sweet Williams if cut right back will produce a complete set of new flowers. The smaller plants that have a heap of tiny flowers it would be easier to shear the tops right off the whole plant then they will produce another set of blooms.

Some plants shed their own blooms

Have you ever noticed how some plants like the hibiscus will shed its own blooms naturally, as will the impatience? The same way as some fruit trees will drop the extra fruit when they have not received sufficient water.

Removing the blooms can seem like a tedious affair, although if you take a walk out into your garden every morning and simply snip a few off each day the rewards will be well worth the effort with a longer supply of beautiful blooms to show off to your friends and neighbors

Cacti

Yes, even Cacti need to have their blooms removed to help new growth to go back into the plant.