Off With Their Heads!
Now that we've finally had some rain, I don't have to spend all my after-school garden time watering seeds and plants. That means that today I had time to do some deadheading in the perennial border. Deadheading is just a colorful term for cutting dead flowers off of a plant. There's a couple reasons that this is an important garden maintenance chore. First, removing the flower helps your plant save energy to maintain strong root (or bulb) growth. If you keep a fertilized flower in place, your plant will spend all its energy making seeds. For a vegetable garden we often want this, but for bulbs like daffodils and tulips, it's counterproductive. If you want strong plants again next year, you need to channel all the energy into the bulb, where it will be stored until next spring. So snip away! Lots of times deadheading can be done just by pinching off sent flowers with your fingertips, but I like to use a scissors. This is easier on my fingers over a large area,...