Basic gardening tips for long term flowering

I visited a friend this week who is new to gardening and she had recently planted an array of new little seedlings.   I find the hardest thing that faces new gardeners is the need to pick off new flower buds, in order to establish a healthy plant and encourage continuous flowering.

I in my normal gardening mode while being shown her marigold seedlings bent down and picked out the small newly forming buds.  "Oh that was brutal" came her reply, I then went on to justify myself.  A new little seedling can't copy with establishing a healthy bush if it is trying to feed the flowers at the same time it puts stress on them.  She was delighted with this simple little tip and we went in for Chai and cake.

Therefore image my surprise when on the way out when I started dead heading her rose, even the spent flowers with only a few petals left.  "Brutal" was the reply again, but after explaining that deadheading is an important part of the flowering process she calmed down again.

Tip One:

To establish healthy seedlings always pick off the new flowers for the first two weeks and let the seedling get bigger and  for continuous flowers and more than one flush of flowers a year alway deadhead.  Simple but true, not hard work but the results are amazing.




Happy gardening

 Bronwyn