Many gardeners find deadhead a boring, mundane job but I always like it. It gives me the opportunity to enjoy plant plants close up, touch them, smell them, and inspect them for diseases or pests. If I do a little everyday, the job is never too overwhelming and the garden is deadheaded about once a week. The prospect of more flowers keeps me pretty faithful about deadheading and I am always spurred on when I see the plants putting out more and more flowers.
The most important reason for me to deadhead is to push my plants to produce more flowers rather than the seeds that they normally would produce. There are other reasons to deadhead of course and not all plants respond to deadheading no matter how much anyone tries. Lilacs, iris, and peonies absolutely refuse to rebloom but I deadhead them anyway in order to improve their appearance and the overall appearance of the garden. When I deadhead my roses I consider shaping the bushes at the same time because they can get very leggy and ugly by the end of the season. Plants like spiderwort have a tendency to self seed in my garden so deadheading them does double duty; promotes rebloom and cuts down the self seeding. Of course there are some plants I want to rebloom AND self seed so I drop the flowers that I deadhead in an area of the garden where I would like to see them grow. You really can’t go wrong with deadheading so give it a try and see if you can get more flowers.
Here is a list of perennials that respond to deadheading with prolonged blooming.
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Baby’s breath (Gysophilia paniculata)
Balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus)
Bellflower-peachleaf (Campanulata persicifolia)
Blanket flower (Garllardia x grandiflora)
Blazing star (Liatris spicata)
Bleeding heart-fernleaf and ringed (Dicentra spp. and Dicentra Formosa)
Cardinal flowers (Lobelia cardinalis)
Columbine (Aquilegia spp.)
Coralbells (Heuchera hybrids)
Delphinium (Delphiniium elatum)
Foamflower (tiarella spp) not all
Foxglove (Digitalis spp)
Garden phlos (Phlox paniculata)
Gaura (Gaura lidheimeri)
Glove thistle (Echinops ritro)
Goldenrod (Solidago spp)
Hollyhock (Acea rosea)
Jupiter’s beard (Centranthus rubber)
Lavender (Lavender spp)
Lupine (Lupinus hybrids)
Mountain bluet (Centaurea montana)
Mullein (Verbascum spp)
Painted daisy (Tanacetum coccineum)
Pincushion plant (Scabiosa columbaria)
Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea
Rose (Rosa spp)
Salvia (Salvia nemerosa)
Shasta daisy (Leucanthemum x superbum)
Sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale)
Speedwell (Veronica spicata)
Spiderwort (Tradescantia Andersoniana)
Stokes aster (Stokesia laevis)
Tickseed (Coreopsis grandiflora)
Once you decide that you will deadhead you have to decide how you will do so. Each plant is different but here are some guidelines.
1. Avoid cutting off developing flower buds. Sounds easy but sometimes the buds are hidden or the flowers are on very short stems and snipping a bud is easy to do accidentally. Coreopsis ‘Moonbean’ has this problem.
2. Cut flowers that are borne singly on a stem, like a Shasta daisy, to the first branch or branch bud.
3. Cut off large individual flowers borne in clusters or on spikes, like spiderwort or hollyhocks, as they wilt and die and then cut off the whole spike, or cluster when no flowers or buds remain.
4. Cut off whole spikes or clusters of small flowers, like speedwell or goldenrod, when the whole spike or cluster is wilted or dead.
Items 3 and 4 are a matter of flower size; it is unreasonable to cut off every flower of baby’s breath or speedwell as it dies because the flowers are so small you would have to do it with manicure scissors and a whole lot of patience. Cutting off the whole stem of flowers once they have all faded will do the job nicely.
Deadheading is a pretty easy job. I have a pair of very sharp strong scissors that I always carry in the pocket of my gardening pants so I can use them any time I see a wilting flower. I always welcome an excuse to wander in my garden among my plants and snip here and there, enjoying the rebloom of some plant that has already responded to my sharp little scissors.
I dont understand how to deadhead the spiderwort flower when done blooming. Do Ipull all the little flower petals off or do i cut the whole flower off which will have a few leaves on it then. A picture to show exactly where to make that cut would help me. picture is worth a thousand words for sure.
Thank You Very Much
Mary Bright
Cutting each flower off would be very time consuming and not worth the effort. Instead, wait until all the flowers in a cluster have finished blooming and then cut the whole cluster off down to leaf or another cluster of flowers. If some leaves go too, don’t worry, spiderwort is vigorous and will quickly grow new ones. My clumps of spiderwort often get floppy by June (I garden in middle North Carolina) and I cut the whole plant down to within a couple of inches of the ground. This leaves a hole for a while, but by August I will have new, blooming plants that last into fall. The point is, you can deadhead spiderwort without any fear of hurting it so snip away and don’t worry about snipping too much; you really can’t.
Karen
This is the first time I have read this word “deadhead”. What is essentially the benefits of doing this process? I can’t seem to have a grasp of the topic. But as a future gardener, I should be able to know all the terminologies that gardening entails.
Rose,
Deadheading is the removal of faded flowers. The most common reason for doing this is to encourage the plant to put energy into producing more flowers rather than seeds. Deadheading also may improve the appearance of the plant (dead flowers are not usually attractive), and may be used to shape too.
Karen