How to Deadhead Flowers & Make Way for More Blooms

To “deadhead” means to remove old flower blooms. This helps tidy up plants we don’t want to produce seeds and makes room for second blooms. Many of our favorite plants bloom repeatedly including petunias, daisies, echinacea, and more. Snip off the old flowers during the growing season as desired but be sure to leave some seed heads in fall for winter wildlife including birds.

Need help selecting the best tool for the job? Check out this guide for choosing the right pruner and more.

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Deadheading For Beginners

Once you get into gardening, it’s inevitable that the topic of deadheading will come up. Once you know why it’s done and what benefits it can have, it’s much easier to decide what’s best for your plants.

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Contents

• What is Deadheading?
  • Deadheading Versus Pruning
• Top Deadheading Tips
• Are There Flowers I Should Not Deadhead?
• Perennials That May Rebloom After Deadheading
• The Science Behind Pruning & Deadheading

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What is Deadheading?

Want a better-looking garden summer garden? Deadheading—the select removal of old flowers and their stems—can help.

First, knowing the basic life cycle of a flowering plant will make deadheading easy to understand.

Flowering plants have one goal: to survive long enough to produce seeds that in turn create new flowering plants.

When flowers are pollinated, one cycle stops and another begins. Flowers begin to die off and seeds begin to form.

Deadheading is simply the removal of any dead or dying flowers (and the ovaries where the seeds develop) to stop seed production. You can also snip off the old flower stems since they too have completed their job.

With the ovary gone, the plant can direct its energy into flower production. Or so the theory goes. I have not been able to find any research to confirm this idea—that deadheading actually triggers new blooms.

It seems more likely that each species is hardwired to produce more flowers—or not, and the act of removing old blooms is irrelevant to this.

But, without the old flowers, the plant has more energy available for other growth. So consider the idea that deadheading causes new blooms as unproven, but here are still good reasons to do it (sometimes).

Simply put, a deadheaded plant often looks better, and the trim may allow better air circulation, potentially preventing disease, while making room for any second or third blooms that may form. There are also instances where lateral shoots may appear, providing a fuller, better-looking plant. And more leaves allows more photosynthesis (energy production).

This is a generalized overview and there are many nuances for different plant species, but you can deadhead any time the flowers are starting to die off, looking tired and wilted.

But, if you want to collect seeds or provide nutritious food for birds, just let them be. Or do a bit of both like I do.

Top Deadheading Tips

Single flower on a stem

• Follow the stem from the top (flower) down to the next leaves.
• Snip immediately above this point.

Multiple flowers on a stem

• As individual flowers begin to wither, snip below seed ovary—on many plants it’s a bulbous part just below the flower petals.
• Snip off entire stem when all flowers are done, either down to a pair of leaves or a main stem.

Flower Clusters

• Haircut time! With hundreds or thousands of tiny flowers, a plant like ground phlox can be sheared. Remove all the old flowers and a portion of the stems.

Always clean your tools before and after deadheading and after handling any diseased plants.

I keep a spray bottle of isopropyl alcohol (70%) with my garden tools for this purpose.

Are There Flowers I Should Not Deadhead?

Yes. Sunflowers, for example, are one-and-done. If you cut off a sunflower, one is not going to grow in its place.

For many other flowering plants, whether or not you deadhead depends on your goal. Removing an old flower is not going to damage the plant. But it will cease seed production for that flower. And seeds are, of course, essential food for many birds, particularly in the winter months.

Some popular annuals are either sterile and do not produce seeds and/or provide continuous blooms for much of the growing season without the need to deadhead.

Supertunias by Proven Winners are one example.

Daylilies are another example—removing the flower will not bring another in its place. They are one and done. But more appear on other stems.

And some perennials are very slow to re-flower or will not at all.

But, for looks, it’s fine to snip off old blooms.

Ideally, know what you are growing and determine your deadheading routine on a plant-by-plant basis, leaving things in fall for the overwintering animals.

~Melissa the Empress of Dirt ♛