Yesterday, I spent an hour as the sun went down deadheading my daylilies. It was a gloriously quiet hour of reflection as I repeated the same action over and over to clean up these powerhouse plants.
Summertime means removing spent flowers from perennials as they complete their bloom cycle. Repeat blooming daylilies are one type of Hemerocallis that will perform even better for you if you take the time to do this task.
Pictured here is the everblooming Stella D'Oro daylily. Basically starting in May this perennial will begin its display of golden, yellow flowering and keep going right up until a hard frost. If you deadhead them (cut off the old flower stalks at the base) you will get even more blossoms than if you leave the stalks up to form seed pods which over the summer will ripen and burst in the fall.
While it isn't necessary, doing it will get you better performance. And let's face it: in a perennial garden, flower power is everything!
If the plant is spending all its energy and nutrient stores to form seeds, then there is that much less available to form flowers. By deadheading, you are conserving and redirecting energy toward flower production.
Time to get out there and start deadheading.
Yup, if you're a gardener that is a VERB!
Let us know what your favorite plant to deadhead is!
Happy Gardening!
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