someone please help me! What is the difference between the two? Attached is a pic of a basket i bought at a local garden center. I am illiterate when it comes to gardening. What am I supposed to do with the purple flowers of the ivy? when they turn brown? Please help me!
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Well, yes it takes time, but it is really rewarding (at least according to me) and I HAVE actually managed to reduce the time that I MUST spend weeding and whatnot, through the use of mulch and so on. On the other hand, I am always buying new plants and moving the old ones around! Just can't leave well enough alone, dang it! But my DH, who thought I was obsessed, allowed as how I was probably not, "really", after he watched a TV show about people who collect orchids from all over the world and then propagate them!! LOL I look like a piker next to them!
mary anne - one other thing i have learned this year - it is a lot of work & takes alot of time! I have to hope everyone will visit on a nice warm, sunny day, so no one has to come inside & see the state in here!
flattery will get you everywhere! I have been playing around for a long time and have some things I picked up that work, and lots of others that don't!! But basically, love to garden.
Yes, that's a good place. Or you could leave the leaf bunch that is directly under the flowers (above where you marked) if you like - I don't know what it would look like - try it and see what you like better.
That's what gardening is all about, really, trying and seeing what works and what doesn't. And, depending on the weather, even what worked before may not work this year! My gardening heros (heroines), BTW, are Marjorie Harris and Lois Hole, both of whom have a happy-go-lucky style re: gardening. but both of them have green thumbs (elbows, arms, shoulders).
1st - thanks so much for the info. I have actually printed of information you have given others a couple of times. Read your info & went out & took one more pic which is attached & put a line, roughly, where i think you mean i should snip - Is this right? Tks again
well, deadheading and pinching are really the same sort of thing IMHO. Pinching is usually used in reference to pinching off the top leaf cluster of a plant before it flowers, something you can do with your fingernails on thumb and finger -- usually you do this to hesbs, like basil, to make it branch more before it gets too long and leggy.
Deadheading usually is used in reference to cutting off (or pinching or breaking or whatever) dead flower heads - hence the "dead head". Usually the purpose of deadheading is not only to tidy up, but also to encourage the plant to flower again. Because you have cut off the flowers that it uses to make seeds that it reproduces with, it will want to make more seeds (from flowers). It also helps to make the plant put its remaining energy for the rest of the season into developing strong roots, rather than into developing seeds (unless you WANT it to produce seeds). I have a lot of perennials, and this root development is something I want in particular. Some plants will make more flowers (usually annuals, like in your baskets, will), and some won't (like peonies), but I generally deadhead anyhow (I am a neat freak), and as I say, it will help make the roots of your perennials more strong and also bulbs like tulips or daffodils.
What a lovely basket -- I think your "ivy" thing is actually Lamium? Anyhow, what I do is this: when the flower head is dead (brown or otherwise looking "over with"), I snip off the stem just below the flower head - in the case of your flowers, there are several on a stalk, and you can just snip off at the base of the stalk. Sometimes this may leave a bit of stalk sticking up, and it looks a bit out of place and it will eventually turn brown too, so you might as well snip down to the next thing on the stalk, whatever that is (usually the first set of leaves after the flower). I say "snip" because I find it is just easiest to use scissors or pruners right off the bat, because if I try to break the stem off, I inevitably make a mess or take off more than I intended!!
Sometimes the flowers grow or flower from the bottom of the flower stalk -- that is, there may be several flower buds on a stalk and they open so that the flowers on the bottom open first, and therefore die first -- for these you have 2 choices, you can either grin and bear it until all of the flowers have opened and died and then snip off the whole flower stalk, or you can snip off the individual little flowers of the stalk as they die, although this ends up looking funny sometimes, with the flowers on the top and the bare stalk below!
Hope this helps, newfie.
mary anne can u give me a brief lesson!