Gardening: Expert demonstrates how to deadhead flowers
Proper garden care can increase the quality as well as longevity of plants, flowers and crops.
If gardeners want their outdoor crops and beautiful flowers to withstand the seasons, it’s important to learn the right way to take care of them.
Taking to his gardening blog to give an insight into what needs to be done around the garden in August, Monty Don shared an “effective” way to keep summer flowers “lasting as long as possible”.
This involves the task of deadheading plants. Deadheading is the term used for the removal of fading or dead flowers from plants.
It is done to keep plants looking attractive and encourage more blooms, whether in beds and borders, containers or hanging baskets.
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This task helps to keep plants lasting longer as it directs energy into stronger growth and more flowers instead of seed pods.
The 68-year-old claimed that dahlias need to be deadheaded “daily” in August as well as any other flowers gardeners have in their garden.
Monty said: “Dahlias will keep producing new flowers well into autumn as long as they are deadheaded regularly.
“The easiest way to tell the difference between a spent flower and an emerging bud is by the shape: buds are invariably rounded whereas a spent flower is pointed and cone-shaped.
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“Always cut back to the next side shoot – even if it means taking a long stem – as this will stimulate new flowers and avoid ugly spikes of the stem.
“And if you do not have dahlias then deadhead anything and everything daily – nothing else is so effective in keeping summer flowers from lasting as long as possible.”
The simplest method to deadhead flowers that have thing stems is to pinch or snap off faded blooms with a finger and thumb, aiming to remove the flower with its stalk to keep the plant looking tidy.
To deadhead plants with thick, tough or stringy stems, use secateurs, scissors or a knife.
On most plants, trim away the spent flower, cutting back to just above the next bud or leaf on the stem.
For plants that produce heads of multiple flowers, pinch or trim off individual flowers and then prune the entire head to just above a lower bud/leaf/side shoot, or to ground level, once all have finished.
Deadheading shouldn’t be a daunting task, and the vast majority of plants don’t need a special technique.
This task is just a case of knowing where to pinch, snap or trim off the spent flowers.
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