Flowers Keep Flowering if you Chop off Their Heads

Have the flowers in your garden all turned dry and brown? You might be able to get the plants to flower again if you follow these simple tips.

With a pair of sharp pruners or scissors, cut off all faded blooms from your plants. This is called "deadheading." Dried flowers often contain seeds, so by removing the seedpods you're forcing the plant to start making more seeds, which means they should flower again soon. Roses, echinacea, digitalis, black-eyed susan and yarrow all benefit from deadheading.

Flowering shrubs, like spirea, can also benefit from a mid-summer trim to remove spent flowers. They'll often reward you with a second flowering.

While you're cleaning up your flowering plants, take a moment to remove any dead leaves as well. Add the flowers and leaves to your compost pile.

Do you have any gardening tips you'd like to share with our readers? Leave them in our comment box or email to me at fpearson@mainstreetconnect.us.

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