Garden Centre

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Basic Biology for Gardeners - Dead-heading

The plants in your garden really have only one interest, much like young men in too much aftershave on a Saturday night – which is to produce seed during a relatively short life! If you let them do this, their task is over.

However, you can trick your plants easily into continuing to blossom, simply by removing flower blooms that have passed their prime, which encourages the plant to produce more flower blooms, all with the intent of producing seed. This results, quite obviously, in a ready show of new flowers. You can extend the bloom life of some flowering plants by three or four weeks by nipping off spent flowers every day. These mesembryanthemums, being guarded by Rebus the blond Cairn Terrier, would have stopped flowering by now if I hadn’t been an assiduous dead-header.

But there are other reasons to dead-head – as I’ve already said in this blog many times, annuals reproduce by seed, and if given the opportunity, you may end up with far more plants next year than you ever wanted – Californian Poppies are the worst culprit for this, in my opinion, and they can take over a lawn in two summers, if you give them half a chance. So removing the flowerheads before they can set seed means you have less work to do in getting rid of unwanted plants next year.

Additionally dead-heading diverts the plant's focus from producing seed, to putting on new growth above and below ground. This means that new shoots will often appear and strong roots systems will develop. For perennials, this can extend the life of the plant as well as improving its appearance.

Finally, dead-heading reduces the scope given to pests and diseases to creep into your garden and take hold of your favourite plants.

Labels: garden flowers, garden secrets, garden tasks, garden tips

The All Seasons Gardener at 5:48 AM

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