MAKE YOUR LABOR COUNT ON THIS LABOR DAY WEEKEND
Eve Keener and
UCCE/ El Dorado Master Gardeners
Sometimes gardeners can get frustrated when they work hard but their garden or landscape still doesn’t seem to grow as well as they had hoped. This week, Master Gardener Eve Keener helps you to minimize your labor and maximize your blooms in your perennial and annual beds.
Are you longing to “labor” in a garden, but don’t have a garden spot? Check the end of the column for information about a new community garden that will open next spring.
Q. All my gardening books mention
deadheading perennial and annual flowering plants. Why is this important and how is it done?
A. The whole purpose of blooms is pollination and seed setting, in other words, reproducing the species. When a plant has set enough seed it will stop blooming. Deadheading (removing the withered blooms) is the method we use to stop seed from forming and, therefore, keep the plant blooming. How you deadhead depends on how the plant blooms. If blooms are continuous throughout the season, that is, there are blooms and new buds on the plant at the same time, the old blossoms are picked or cut off as they wither. This can be done by just pulling off the dead blossoms or by cutting off both the blossom and the stalk, which is often easier and faster with a pair of sharp gardening scissors than with clippers. Some plants, such as Shasta daisy and coreopsis, have cycles of mass bloom and, although there may be a few buds not yet opened, it is easier to shear off all the old blossoms, after which the plant will grow and put on a second bloom cycle. This is easy to do with a pair of sharp grass shears.
Many perennial plants have only one bloom cycle per year and deadheading will not necessarily produce further blooming that season, but it is still important to deadhead so that the plant’s vigor goes into producing a larger plant for next season, rather than producing seed. Some perennials, such as new varieties of daylilies and bearded iris, listed as “reblooming” varieties, will have a second bloom if deadheaded. However, these particular plants bloom sequentially on the same stem, so wait until all blooms are faded before cutting the stem. Consult a good gardening book to see which of your perennial plants have repeat blooms.
Annual flowers benefit from deadheading also. Annuals complete their life cycle in one season and usually die with the first frost, but you can keep them blooming until then by continually removing spent blooms. Some, such as impatiens and fibrous begonia, need no deadheading to continue blooming, but others, such as zinnia, petunia, cosmos and alyssum, should be sheared or individually deadheaded to keep them blooming throughout the season. Even the new “wave” petunias do much better when sheared at midsummer.
One thing to remember, however, is that if you want annuals or perennials to reseed themselves, it is important not to deadhead the final bloom of the season, but to let the seed heads form so that you will have seeds for next season. You can either harvest the seeds, and scatter them where you want new plants next year, or collect and save them in an airtight container in the refrigerator or a cool place until next spring or just let the seeds drop from the plant and sprout where they land. Often it is easy to transplant seedlings to where you want them next year; the young plants are easy to pull out if there are too many, or they are in the wrong place. Keep in mind, however, that if the plant is a hybrid, seedlings will not necessarily be the same as the parent plant. A good example of this is aquilegia, or columbine, which, except for the native species, are hybrids and could well bloom in different colors than the parent plant. Unless you are purist, however, you will be just as happy with the new seedlings as with the parent.
New
Are you a gardener with no place to garden? Do you have too much shade or too much slope or just not enough space or good soil? Would you like to learn about vegetable gardening but don’t know how to get started? Do you wish you could visit with other gardeners while you are tending your garden?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you just might
be interested in the