Dead-Heading and Pinching Back

Since annuals develop, mature, and die in one season, dead-heading (removing spent flowers) can encourage the plants to send out another flower before seeds develop. Once seeds are set, this gives the plant the message that its purpose has now been carried out. By removing flowers that are on their way out anyway, you are helping to extend the flowering time for the plant.

Check to see that flowers are becoming brown and beginning to look bedraggled—this is the time to remove them.

Use your fingers to pinch off (remove) some of the stem, just under the flower head. You may also use scissors for plants with harder or thicker stems.
Pinching back is basically the same technique, but is used to encourage plants to become bushier and fuller--instead of growing straight up, which can produce leggy plants (as well as fewer flowers).

If you have low growing plants such as alyssum or plants that tend to spread out in profusion, such as phlox and lobelia, then you can cut them back using shears. This will keep walkways tidy as well as encourage more blooms on the plants.

For perennials, pinching back will also prolong the growing season, as well as lead to bushier, more compact plants with a profusion of flowers. You can continue the process, either just below the flowers, or between sets of leaves—new buds or growing points just below where you pinch off will start up new growth. Thus each time you pinch back, two new stems will split off where one would have been before.

Note that some annuals do not need to be dead-headed—begonias, impatiens and many others will lose faded blooms on their own. On the other hand, marigolds will need to be dead-headed often, throughout the season. If you scatter the seeds in the immediate area (or place them in a small plastic bag and release them elsewhere in the garden—or scatter at a friend's place) then you should have at least one or two extra sets of plants that will mature over the growing season.

Once seeds are set, these can be removed and then spread in the garden, or else collected and then scattered somewhere else. One thing my mother always enjoys is taking seeds from gardens she passes as she goes on a walk through town. She usually limits herself to the plants within easiest reach of the sidewalk. It has been enjoyable for us to see flowers coming up in the garden at our place, and to be able to pinpoint the place where the seeds came from originally—whether it was from a previous garden of my mother’s or else a garden we passed while on a particularly memorable walk!