Clip back
fading roses to the first five-leaflet stem to promote new blooms.
Deadheading or grooming is an essential part of garden care to encourage new flower growth and extend the blooming season on perennials. While the name sounds a little ominous, deadheading just means removing fading flowers and actually promotes plant health by diverting energy that would have gone into seed production into new growth.
Instructions
1. Pour some rubbing alcohol on a clean rag and thoroughly wipe down the blades of your garden pruners and scissors. It is important to keep garden pruner's and scissors clean and disinfected. This prevents fungal problems and the spread of powdery mildew and pest to other plants.
2. Clip back single blooms back several inches below the flower when the petals have shriveled or browned and the center, if it has one, loses its color. Sterilize your clippers again before moving to the next plant.
3. Clip away individual fading flowers on cluster or spike-forming blooms at their bases as flowers fade. On flower clusters you may have several flowers close together with some unopened. Work carefully to remove the individual flower without hurting the integrity of the entire cluster of flowers. When the entire cluster or spike is finished blooming, cut back to foliage. Sterilize your clippers before moving to the next plant.
4. Determine whether or not to deadhead an entire plant, based on the time of year, whether you want the plant to reseed, or leave the plants to feed wildlife. Coneflowers, for instance, produce a large seed head that can reseed an area as the flower dries and the seeds fall to the ground. Coneflowers are an excellent source of food for birds such as finches. They go after the seed and while there they will eat insects in the garden. You can either remove the dead coneflower, or leave a few for your feathered friends to enjoy.
5. Remove faded bulb flowers, like tulips or daffodils, when the stalk begins to yellow. Deadheading flower bulbs don't usually cause the flower to re-bloom. However by removing the dead flowers the energy to produce seed is instead used to feed the bulb for the next years growth. On daffodils remove the entire flower stem back to within an inch of the plant's base. Don't remove bulb foliage until it has yellowed and died off completely.
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