Summer bedding promises months of colour, but only if you keep up your side of the bargain. The pots and baskets that are still going strong in September belong to the gardeners who deadheaded and fed them through the summer, ten minutes at a time.
Why deadheading works
A flower's whole aim is to set seed and then stop. By snipping off the faded blooms before they can do so, you trick the plant into producing more flowers in its continued effort to reproduce. Stop deadheading and the display fades within a fortnight.
How to do it
It is a pleasant, pottering job for a summer evening, glass in the other hand.
- Pinch or snip spent flowers back to a leaf or bud.
- Do it little and often rather than in one big session.
- Some, like busy lizzies, drop their own and need no help.
Feed the hungry ones
Plants flowering flat out for months in a pot soon exhaust the compost. A weekly high-potash liquid feed keeps the flowers coming, while plants left unfed grow pale and slowly give up however much you deadhead them.
Never let pots dry out
Heat and constant flowering make container plants thirsty, and a basket that dries out drops its buds and sulks for weeks. Check pots daily in warm weather, water thoroughly rather than with a splash, and the display rolls on into autumn.