Freshening Up the Garden

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Deadheading Flowers

Keep your flowers blooming longer and your garden tidier with a bit of deadheading.

Remove the flower stem as the bloom begins to fade. Use a pruner or sharp scissors and cut just above the first set of leaves or the side shoots where new flower buds are forming.

Plants like daylilies and balloon flower require a bit different care. Remove the individual blooms as they fade. Once bloomed out you can cut the flower stem back at the base. You may want to skip deadheading late blooming varieties. This allows them to form seed pods for a bit of winter interest.

Deadheading won’t extend the bloom for columbine but it will prevent reseeding - if that is a concern for you. Prune the flowering stems back to their base in the foliage.

And deadheading peonies is strictly for aesthetics. Removing the seedpods as they form, back to a healthy set of leaves, helps keep stems upright and makes for a tidier plant throughout the summer.

Just a bit more information: Pruning your flowers can also impact the appearance, size, and flowering of plants. Prune Russian sage and autumn joy sedum back halfway in mid June to prevent plants from flopping. Keep pinching asters and mums back to 6 inches throughout June (a few weeks later in southern regions) to create compact plants for fall bloom.

Prune back the outer stems of Shasta daisies and purple coneflower to create a ring of shorter stiffer stems on each plant. This living support will hold the taller central stems upright and flower a bit later to extend the plant’s bloom time.