It Pays to Pinch

The most common advice I give to fellow gardeners is to pinch plants back at planting time. And by pinching back, I really mean get rid of the flowers which is the whole reason they bought the plant in the first place. Most people react as if I've told them to remove the heads of their children. But unless you want a straggly, unflower-y mess come late July, pinching off those flowers in May is a must.

The conundrum of plant buying is if the plant isn't blooming chances are you will overlook it. Buying plants can be such a visceral, emotional thing. A blooming plant is more likely to entice you to buy. However, this is not really the plant you want to plant. The best plant is short and wide, no flowers and preferably few buds. Sounds depressing, right? Basically, you want plants that have put their energy into roots and not flowers early in the season. Then when you plant them, they are well established and will bloom more than if you buy the flowering plant. 

However, in order to get you to buy the plant, retailers will try to make sure that plant is blooming when you come to buy. Makes sense, right? That's where the pinching comes it. You can basically force a plant to put down roots at transplant time rather than continue spending it's energy putting out those lovely flowers that made you buy it in the first place. 

Case in point,  I got these Red Morn petunias at work. Now our early warm weather in April made many of our plants go a little crazy, consequently, these are pretty leggy petunias. If I were to leave these as they are and plant them, the result would be disappointing. The plant would never fill out the pot I'm planting them in and the blooms  will be sparse on spindly, scraggly stems. So not the look I'm going for. 

By pinching off the long stems and yes, all the blooms, the plant will put it's energy into putting down a strong root system and sending out more stems on which to grow even more blooms. It's hard. I'm not even going to pretend that it isn't. It's taken me years to get on board this train and it still pains me to do it. The only way I can is that I know I will be happier in the long run. 

I do have to admit that the pinching back I had to do yesterday was quite dramatic and painful. Everything I loved about this plant was now going into the compost pile. And my pots, well, they're pretty pathetic. If you can't stomach the thought of doing this drastic of a beheading after spending your hard-earned money, try pinching back just half of the blooms, or leave just the buds. You'll notice I managed to save one little bloom and a couple of buds since they were growing low on the plants. Even this selective pruning will reward you with better blooming later. And you can always pinch off leggy stems later as the rest of the plant catches up and starts blooming. 

If you want full, constantly blooming plants it really does pay to either buy plants before they start to bloom or pinch them back at planting. Granted, containers don't look great now, but they will look good in a couple of weeks and more importantly, they are going to look fantastic in a month and beyond. Pictures will be forthcoming!