Baytree Garden Centre’s Mark Cox on getting your summer deadheading done properly

Baytree Garden Centre’s Mark Cox offers his advice on getting your deadheading right...

The school summer holidays are just over the horizon and normally for me this means that most of my major gardening tasks have been completed for this season.

I guess many of you like me reach this point in the year and realise that, for a few weeks, we can enjoy the fruits of our labours and just relax in our own little slice of paradise.

Sadly though, in order to maintain the order we’ve created, a touch of housekeeping needs to be done on a regular basis. What I am alluding to is the task of deadheading.

When the flower head on a flowering plant has started to go past its best it will begin trying to set the flower head to seed and all of its energy will be channelled into that task. This then reduces the number of flower heads on display.

So, to combat this, gardeners up and down the land engage themselves in the almost never ending process of deadheading.

There are a number of other reasons to deadhead, which includes reducing the amount of falling petals and debris from flowers such as roses and peonies. Another reason is that it prevents the plant from self-seeding everywhere. An example of this is Valeriana Officinalis which can become a real battle if not regularly dead headed.

Summer bedding will probably require daily dead heading in order to keep the plants looking their best and to stimulate new flower growth. Border perennials such as lilac may only need deadheading once a week or once every other week.

The simplest way to deadhead a flower is to use your finger and thumb to pinch the spent flower head and stem out. This will help keep the plant looking tidy. For plants which are a little tougher i.e. they have thick, tough or maybe woody stems then it’s best to use a sharp pair of secateurs. On these types of plants you are aiming to trim away the dead flower and stem to the next bud or leaf on the stem.

With roses and in particular Hybrid T roses it is widely regarded as better to snap the flower head off which should break the stem just below the flower head. This technique has been shown to quicken the process of setting more blooms when compared with Hybrid T roses which have been dead headed with secateurs. For all other roses , simply cut off the individual flower heads to just above the nearest leaf.

Rhododendrons, azaleas, lilacs and tree peonies just need a little care taken when dead heading to avoid damaging the new growth buds. These buds can be found just below the flower head itself so when removing the flower try to pinch or cut it as close to the point where the head joins the stem of the plant as possible.

There is, however, a great number of flowering plants that you’ll probably not want to deadhead. Examples of such are sunflowers, the seed they produce is much loved by many of our native wild birds. Rudbeckia is another plant from which birds love to feed, not forgetting those that produce hips and berries such as Viburnum and rambling roses.

So tonight I’m going to head out into the garden with maybe a cheeky glass of something chilled and white to begin today’s deadheading, nobody ever said that you can’t enjoy yourself whilst doing it though. Cheers!