We owe this topic to a reader: in response to our article about deadheading our friend Cathy asked in the comments: “Do people do this with vegetable plants as well? For example tomatoes have so many flowers on them if you take some of them off, will you get bigger tomatoes?” With a new growing season upon us, we thought we’d revisit that question in a blog of its own. While deadheading isn’t necessarily the best approach for vegetable plants, two related gardening practices—pinching and pruning—can help you get more out of your shrubs, bushes, and vegetables. So let’s dig in and learn the hows and whys of pinching, pruning, and deadheading!
Pruning Plants to Improve Shape, Structure, and Growth
Let’s start with pruning, a topic we’ve covered before but we can always use a refresher on. Pruning involves cutting away parts of an established plant in order to improve its shape, structure or growth. This sounds broad reaching because it is: pruning can be done for any of a number of reasons. Trees are often pruned to remove dead or damaged limbs, shrubs and bushes are pruned to give them a desired shape or density or improve flower development, and sometimes vegetable plants like tomatoes are pruned to promote more robust growth and better fruit production. Pruning should be done with clean, sharp tools and with some care and intention—know what you’re cutting away and why before you start doing it. We have an entire blog here about pruning vegetable plants, so give that a read and then reach out if you have any questions!
Pinching Off Tips to Promote New Growth
Pinching is a form of pruning, but whereas pruning generally involves using shears, clippers, or saws to remove the unwanted portions of the plant, pinching usually involves just pinching off new growth with our fingertips or maybe a small tool. Pinching is designed to remove some new growth in order to encourage the plant to produce more elsewhere. This is especially useful for some flowering plants like petunias, dahlias, and chrysanthemums, which will often reward careful pinching with a huge growth of new blooms. What and when to pinch will depend on the plant: older and established petunias may benefit from a relatively aggressive round of pinching fairly early in the season. Removing the primary growth tips will encourage the plant to produce more axillary growth—the new shoots that appear at the base of leaves and steps—which should in turn create bushier, fully growth and more flowers later on. Dahlias may benefit from one round of pinching earlier in the season, by contrast, and chrysanthemums generally give more flowers if they get a pinching when about 12 inches/30cm tall and again about 100 days before blooms are expected. As always you’ll need to learn your plants and what individuals species and varietals need, but that’s the fun of gardening.
Deadheading for More and Bigger Flowers
This leaves us with deadheading, which gardening technique designed to encourage flowering plants to produce more flowers during their blossoming season. The basic idea is simple. As blooms fade, cut or pinch them away from the plant. This can encourage the plant in question to produce additional buds or blooms and prolong the flowering season. While each plant may have different needs, deadheading is generally an ongoing process while the plant is in bloom. When an individual flower starts to fade a bit, it is removed to nudge the plant towards producing a new one. As with pruning or pinching, deadheading should be done with clean sharp tools or clean hands to minimize the risk of passing a disease to the plant. A wide variety of flowering plants may benefit from deadheading, including bee balm, evening primrose, phlox, bellflower, blanket flower, and yarrow.
There’s one important consideration with deadheading: by removing flowers we’re preventing them from developing seeds. Some common garden favorites, like forget-me-nots, foxglove, and lobelia, should not be deadheaded as they reseed easily for the following year. Other plants like purple coneflower/echinacea, Rudbeckia spp, and sunflowers should not be deadheaded as the seeds and seed heads provide both food and habitat for birds and insects over the winter months. Yet again, you’ll need to do a little research on the plants in question—or just send us an email and we’ll do our best to help.
We hope this helps you all understand the roles that pinching, pruning, and deadheading play in the health and longevity of our gardens. Cathy, we really hope you’ll take a look at the information about pruning and pinching veggie plants. Gardening season is here, so brushing up on this information can help us all have a more productive and beautiful spring!
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