Project: Properly deadheading flowers

Cost: Free

Supplies: Scissors

Difficulty: Easy

Deadheading annuals and perennials, which means removing the dead flowers on a plant, helps create more flowers by redirecting the plant’s energy toward generating blooms rather than seeds. When a flower finishes blooming, it goes to seed, which is the plant’s way of proliferating.

“(Making seeds) takes all the energy away from the mother plant, so you have to clean them out, and that way it’ll give more strength to the plant,” explained Giovanna Cloward, owner of Galveston Gardens in Bend.

Cloward demonstrated how to properly deadhead a plant. “Deadheading isn’t just removing the head of the flower. You have to go all the way down to the connection of the stem,” said Cloward. If only the head of the flower is removed, the plant will continue to seed “and stop blooming,” said Cloward. “Most people do it the easy way, which is plucking the blossom, but that’s not right.”

She also explained that there are a few types of flowers, including bacopa and million bells, that do not require deadheading, but rather a gentle tousling to knock dead blooms off the plant.

Step 1: Identify a dead flower then follow the stem back to the nearest leaf node, which is where the next set of leaves is growing. For leafless stems, like roses, go all the way back to the next stem.

Step 2: Using scissors, snip the stem just above the leaves or just above the stem, depending on the flower type.

Editor’s note: Check back every other week for do-it-yourself projects.