Home Garden Flowers: How to Dead-Head

So you have planted your home garden and it is beautiful and full of flowers! Then you notice that the blossoms are beginning to die off and your petunias don't seem to have as much color. It is time to learn how to dead-head. Don't panic, you are not going to kill anything. You will be doing something that will make your plants blossom more and your friends and neighbors notice how beautiful and colorful the flowers in your garden are, and they will ask you how they can do the same thing at their home.

Some Examples of Types of Flowers that Need Dead Heading:

• Petunias
• Wave Petunias
• Osteospermum
• Geraniums
• Gerber Daisys

Reasons to Dead Head Your Home Garden Flowers:

• Increases the number of blossoms on you flowers
• Increases the length of time your flowers will bloom for
• Eliminating dead or decomposing plant matter will help protect your flowers from bacteria and viruses
  
• Keeps your home garden flowers happy!

Deadheading your home garden flowers means removing the dying blossom and the part of the stem that it is connected to. This will prevent the plant from going to seed and encourage it to keep blooming. For long stemmed flowers like Geraniums, Gerber Daisys and Osteospermum, this means breaking them off or cutting them with shears as close to the main stem or base as possible. For flowers such as petunias and wave petunias this means cutting the part of the stem that is connected to the blossom about a quarter inch from the main stem that it is growing off of.

God Bless and Happy Growing!