Gardening with Peter Bowden: Deadheading

Towing boats along the Waterford canals. Photo provided by The Saratoga County History Roundtable.

As summer rolls along,  we can begin to enjoy the fruits of our spring labor.  Finally our flowering plants are leaping into life.  It would seem that there is little to do now but enjoy the show.  While that’s true, there are a couple of easy things we need to do now to keep the show going…deadheading and feeding.

Deadheading is simply snipping off spent flowers and the seed pod that form after the flower.  The main reason for deadheading it is to prevent the plant from wasting energy producing seeds.  Producing seeds is the highest priority of an annual since it is their only chance at reproduction, so the plant pours all the energy it can muster into those seeds.  Any energy it puts into seeds is energy that could go toward more buds and flowers.  This is where we need to step in and remove the seed pods…deadheading.

You would think that there would be no need to deadhead perennials since they come back from their roots every year.  Perennials are ‘low maintenance’ but you still should deadhead them.  The obvious reason is a neater appearance of the plant but the real reason is to improve the plant’s vigor.  Even though perennials return from their roots, they still pour lots of energy into their offspring….seeds.  When we deadhead perennials, we’re redirecting the energy the plant produces into more leaves which produce even more energy that it uses to expand it’s root system.  Our perennials will mature more quickly and produce even more flowers next year if we remove the seed pods. 

Daffodils, allium and others grow from hardy bulbs that were planted in the fall.  By now the petals have fallen away and we are left with these clusters of ripening seeds.  If we let them continue, they prevent the bulb from storing as much energy as they could.  Once the seed pods are removed the bulb has no choice but to store the energy produced by the leaves and roots.  Now the bulb will grow larger as it stores lots of extra energy.  We can expect many more flowers next year if we snip away the seeds now.  More flowers…nothing wrong with that idea.

Even flowering shrubs benefit from deadheading.  Just as with the perennials, I can expect more flowers next year if I take a little time now to snip off those seed pods.  Lilacs form next year’s flower buds during what remains of this growing season, so the sooner I remove those energy-robbing seed pods, the better the show will be next year. 

Just a few minutes spent deadheading produced this batch of seed pods that are on their way to the compost pile…no need to waste all those nutrients stored in those seed pods.  Deadheading not only makes your gardens look neater but will pay a dividend of more flowers and healthier plants…not a bad reward for such little effort. 

Now that we’ve stopped our plants from wasting energy on seeds it is time to add energy by feeding.  To get the most flowers from your annuals, you can feed them with a soluble plant food.  Soluble plant food is absorbed by the plant very quickly but only lasts a short time…especially when rain washes it away.  This means that we need to use soluble plant food every couple of weeks for continuous feeding. 

There are a lot of soluble plant foods to choose from so it is important to pick the one that will promote the most flowers.  Phosphorus stimulates root growth and flower production.  Phosphorus is represented by the middle number of the tree you’ll find on soluble plant foods like my favorite, Jack’s Blossom Booster.  That’s it!  A little effort now (along with some sun and dry weather, please) will insure that our gardens look their best for the rest of the season and beyond. 

Thanks for the read!