Pruning Your Annual Flowers

Pruning is the removal of dead or faded flowers and seed pods. When annuals expend energy to produce seeds after the flower fades, flower production often decreases. To maintain vigorous growth and assure neatness, remove spent flowers and seed pods.

Deadheading flowers as they fade not only tidies up the plant, but it interrupts this sequence and stimulates new flowers to appear. Simply snap off the dead flower with your thumb and forefinger. Try it on summer bedding plants and annuals.

Although this step is not necessary for all flowers, it is a good practice with ageratum, calendula, celosia, coleus, cosmos, geraniums, marigolds, scabiosa, salvia, rudbeckia, and zinnias. It is especially recommended for your tulips as it will help them to regrow next year.

When the tulip petals fall from the flower, a seed pod is left on the stem. The tulip plant will continue to feed the seed pod by extracting nutrients from the soil. Since the flower won't bloom again, the seed pod robs the tulip bulb of the energy it needs to regenerate.

When the pod is removed, the plant draws energy from the environment and stores it in the tulip bulb. So, if you remove the seed pod, you give the tulip bulb the chance to renew itself.

Check plants weekly. Many modern cultivars are self cleaning - their spent flowers disappear quickly. Some cultivars are sterile and do not produce seeds.

Some bedding plants such as polka dot plant and impatiens, may benefit from pruning back for size control and rejuvenation. Others such as gomphrena can be pruned or sheared into shapes. Pruning can stimulate greater flowering of some cultivars of petunias. Cut back plants as needed leaving approximately one-half of the shoot.