Deadheading Your Plants

Deadheading, particularly any annual plants, is a good practice that ensures beautiful blooms throughout the growing season. Removing the spent blooms will provide the plant with feedback that says to keep producing flowers rather than seed. Each plant only has so much energy and letting a spent bloom go to seed will discourage it from having a continuous number of blooms.

Towards the end of the season, a gardener may choose to stop deadheading for the last month to collect fresh seed for next year. Otherwise, deadheading the plant regularly will ensure that the garden has profuse blooms and colour until first frost. 

When deadheading a plant, one should snip the stem just above the next set of healthy leaves. Regular deadheading is a good daily practice for most annuals as well as many perennials (e.g., roses, coreopsis, Black-eyed Susan, etc.)