Daisies are beautiful flowers; in fact, they are very happy and cheery flowers. With their lovely white petals and yellow center, they are eye-catchers for sure.
If you’re growing them in your yard, you’ll love how easy they are to grow. This doesn’t mean, however, that you don’t have to do anything to them to keep them looking their best.
Introduction to Daisies
There are actually several different types of daisies including the Shasta, Marguerite, ox-eye, and painted daisy.
Daisies are perennials that usually bloom from early summer to the first frost. One of the few things that you have to do to maintain them and make sure that they grow right is to deadhead them.
Deadheading sounds like a fancy name but the process is really very simple. Deadheading means removing dead or faded flowers near the end of the growing season, not just to make them look better but also to encourage additional growth.
It’s another word for a type of pruning and it helps your flowers stick around much longer.
Deadheading doesn’t have to be done all season long so it isn’t a chore that you have to dread throughout the summer months. But towards the end of the growing season, start watching for dead petals and leaves so you’ll know just when to start deadheading.
You’ll want to look for any petals, leaves, or stems that are yellow, faded, wilted, or obviously dead. In other words, you’ll need to remove everything on the plant that isn’t alive and looking its best.
This allows your plant to concentrate all of its energy towards its rebirth the following spring, helping make that next blooming season much more successful.
Getting Started
To deadhead your daisies, the first thing you need to do is make sure that the blades on your garden shears are cleaned properly.
This is especially important if you’ve been pruning other plants because it is easy to spread viruses from one plant to another when your shears are dirty.
To clean your shears, you can use a regular anti-bacterial cleanser of some type. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive because as long as it’s anti-bacterial, it will clean your shears correctly.
The Step-by-Step Process
When you’re ready to deadhead, start by looking for the lateral bud, which is a bud that grows from a joint between the main stem and a leaf. It won’t take you long to recognize a lateral bud and when you find one, trim the faded flower with your shears until you get down to that bud.
As the season progresses, trim the faded or dead flowers the same way by cutting the stems until you reach the lateral bud. Once it gets to the point where there are no new buds, just trim above the next leaf.
Essentially, you want the entire flower plant to be free of any faded, discolored, or dead petals and stems by the time you’re finished deadheading.
In the fall, look for the thick cluster of leaves located near the base of the plant. This is called the basal foliage and you only see it at the end of the growing season. When it’s this time of year, however, go ahead and trim the plant all the way back to the basal foliage.
You’ll do this for several reasons. First, it stimulates both root growth and foliage so that the following growing season is more productive. Second, it allows the plant to set bed for the next blooming season.
At the end of the growing season and once you’ve trimmed the plant to the basal foliage, your daisies likely won’t bloom any more for the rest of the year. However, these steps are needed so that the following growing season is much more successful.
The Many Benefits of Deadheading Your Daisies
Many flowers benefit from deadheading and this includes daisies. Not only does deadheading make the flowers look better and encourage them to bloom again the next growing season but it also keeps the flowers much healthier.
This doesn’t mean that you will experience a re-blooming the following year but it does increase the likelihood that that will happen.
In addition to these advantages, deadheading also means that the following year’s blooming season is likely to be longer than the current one. If it is not longer, however, don’t panic. It doesn’t mean that you did anything wrong with your deadheading; there are many other factors that can affect the next year’s growth.
And finally, another huge benefit to deadheading your daisies and other perennials is that it helps the flowers conserve energy. Without dead and wilting petals and stems to direct their energy to, daisies will instead direct that energy to their foliage and roots.
This alone makes it more likely that you will see more attractive, fuller blooms the following season.
There are numerous benefits to deadheading your daisies but it’s also good to remember that if your flowers don’t bloom well the following year, it might be something that is out of your control.
Lots of things can affect how perennials grow from one season to the next so if you’re unsuccessful, just go over everything you did and see if you could’ve done something different. If not, just chalk this season up to experience and move on!
Final Thoughts
Daisies are beautiful perennial flowers that come in various colors and sizes. They brighten up anyone’s garden easily.
If you deadhead at the end of the growing season, your daisies will look better and bloom better the following season. Since perennials bloom once a year, it’s important to prepare them each fall for the following growing season and the best way to do this is to deadhead them.
Just remember to deadhead once the fall season arrives and once you start noticing dead, faded, or wilted petals and leaves on the plant.
It doesn’t take that much time to deadhead your daisies but it is a very important part of their basic yearly maintenance. In fact, spending just a little time on deadheading keeps your flowers around much longer and enables them to look better as long as they’re with you.
Growing up with a mom who filled her home (inside and out) with all sorts of plants, Lisa got her start in gardening at a young age. Living now on her own with a home and yard full of plants (including an indoor greenhouse), she shares all the gardening tips she’s gained over the years.