To nip and tuck your way through the garden at this time of year is not only something enjoyable, it’s so relaxing it is almost like a meditation. Plus you are more involved with your plants than at any other time of the year, except planting. You can do it for ten minutes a day or an hour every so often. It will make your garden look constantly renewed.
You don’t need fancy equipment just slightly different snippers for annuals and perennials. And here are a few tips to make it effective as well as enjoyable:
These plants are racing to set seeds before they croak in autumn frosts. This means they flower furiously, blooms die and turn into seeds. The spent flower is post bloom and pre-seed and they look awful (dead wet mouse comes to mind). If you take these off a plant (and this is especially true for annuals), they will keep on blooming in the effort to make seed.
The Plants:
The following thrive on this treatment:
Self sowers: let a few to go to seed for next year. They include
The Equipment: It?s primitive…
The Method:
You can get right behind the saggy bloom and cleanly snap it off with your fingernails. Or just snip it off with scissors. Geraniums should be taken back to the next node (the swelling along the stalk) with a brisk flick of the wrist. Do this with your container plants every day when watering and combine two pleasurable chores.
From this week on, to remove dead flowerheads is to give the plant a chance to concentrate on getting more strength into its roots before winter. But there are other reasons to deadhead as well ?
The Plants:
The Equipment:
Clean sharp secateurs.
The Method
For almost all perennials go to the next node (swelling) along the stalk and cut where you see there is new growth. This also helps shape the plant.
Bring out your inner cosmetic surgeon: Nipping and tucking around the garden will make you feel better as well as to keep the garden looking great. In fact don’t even think about going outside without a pair of snippers in your hand from now until October.