Deadheading

Now that it is Summer, we enjoy seeing so many different flowers blooming!  But did you know that most annuals or even perinneal need deadheading so that they will keep on blooming all summer long?  What does deadheading mean?  Deadheading is the act of removing by pinching or cutting a spent or dried out flower at its stem so that seeds do not develop.  The idea behind it is that plants bear flowers in order to produce seeds so that they can continue to live on year after year through their seeds.  Once they produce flowers and seeds are maturing, somehow the plants know this and they will stop putting out flowers because seeds had developed but if you pinched off the spent flowers, the plant knows that they need to produce flowers that will develop into seeds, so as long as you keep pinching off the flower head before the seeds mature, your repeat blooming annuals/perenials will keep on  blooming.