The Garden
Clockwise from top left: Geraniums, marigolds, and zinnias all benefit from having their spent flowers pinched or snipped off.
Pinch Me Again and Again, and I Will Reward You By Michelle Sutton Photos by Larry Decker
W
hen you buy your petunias, geraniums, and other annuals from a good grower in May, the plants are bushy and prolifically blooming. By midsummer, they often look leggy and the blooming has dropped off. A sense of personal failure can set in: “What happened to my beautiful flower boxes/flower pots/annual beds?” I believe that this experience with annuals is the reason why a lot of people give up on gardening and decide they “don’t have a green thumb.” But it’s not their fault. Plants should come with instruction—much more instruction than “Sun or Shade” and “18 inches tall.” My fantasy is that every garden center, box store, and nursery would have an in-house educator who you could see on your way out for pithy advice delivered in an infectiously enthusiastic fashion. Oh—and they would not be trying to sell you products you don’t need. This is not altogether a fantasy; in the Hudson Valley, we are lucky to have independent garden centers and plant nurseries that provide hands-on education (and we should support those that do!). Snips for Success Keep in mind that in greenhouse production, the grower has provided those annuals with the ideal conditions of light, quality potting mix, fertilizer, water, and lots and lots of pinching. It takes some fussing on your part to keep the plants looking like they did the day you brought them home. A huge part of that fuss is 1) pinching back stems in order to keep the plant bushy by encouraging lateral branching and 2) pinching off, or deadheading, spent flowers.
When we pinch off spent flowers, the plant says to itself, “I didn’t get to set seed; I gotta produce more flowers, stat!” Petunias are an example of a plant that benefits from both pinching stems and deadheading flowers. Fortunately, pinching and deadheading are relaxing and gratifying because they work so well. For my pinching I use a pair of $12 microblade pinching shears that is designed for this purpose. It makes it easy to home in on the right place to snip and to not overdo—if I use larger pruners for pinching, I sometimes inadvertently snip adjacent flowers or stems. The pinching shears are precise and fun to use. On the other end of the spectrum from tiny shears, I’m reminded of my beloved, irreverent herbaceous plants professor, Dr. Lyons, and what he taught us to do when faced with a bed of petunias that had become leggy and sparsely blooming. We newbies watched, mouths agape, as he brought out the weed whacker and used it to shear off the top half of all the petunias. The plants looked like heck for about 10 days, but after the whack and some deep watering and a modest infusion of granular fertilizer, the petunia beds rebounded like a hundred purple rising Phoenixes. If your annuals are really far gone like the petunias of Dr. Lyons’s class, you can consider a hard prune, via weed whacker or other, less dramatic means. Mohonk Mountain House Greenhouse Grower Cheryl Hearty says, “I have noticed that new gardeners especially are hesitant to prune annuals and perennials. It is okay to prune plants that are straggly, floppy, too tall, or look awful after blooming heavily. Have faith that your plants will come back better than before!” 8/14 CHRONOGRAM HOME 31