Tickseed, known botanically as Coreopsis, brightens many gardens with its cheerful, daisy-like flowers. These adaptable perennials offer a prolonged display of color, making them a popular choice for borders, containers, and meadows. Proper maintenance practices help ensure their continued beauty and vigor throughout the growing season. Among these practices, deadheading stands out as a simple yet effective technique for enhancing the plant’s performance.
What Is Deadheading
Deadheading refers to the practice of removing spent or faded flowers from a plant. This technique redirects the plant’s energy away from seed production, channeling it into promoting vegetative growth or encouraging additional flower buds. Deadheading also improves the plant’s overall appearance by eliminating unsightly, wilting blooms.
Benefits of Deadheading Tickseed
Deadheading specifically benefits tickseed plants by encouraging a more prolific and extended blooming period. Removing spent flowers prompts the plant to produce new blossoms, leading to a continuous display of color from late spring through fall. This practice also enhances the plant’s aesthetic appeal by preventing messy, brown seed heads. Tickseed varieties can be enthusiastic self-seeders, and deadheading helps manage their spread in the garden.
Removing aging flowers also contributes to the plant’s overall vigor. By not expending energy on seed development, the tickseed can allocate resources to strengthening its root system and producing healthier foliage. This redirection of energy helps the plant maintain a robust structure and better withstand environmental stresses. Deadheaded tickseed plants often appear fuller and more lush, enhancing the garden’s visual appeal.
When to Deadhead Tickseed
The optimal time to begin deadheading tickseed is as soon as the first blooms start to fade, typically in late spring or early summer. Gardeners should continue this process throughout the entire blooming season, which often extends into early fall. Regularly inspecting plants every few days allows for the timely removal of spent flowers, preventing them from setting seed.
Identifying spent tickseed flowers is straightforward; they typically show signs of fading color, shriveled petals, or the beginnings of a small, green seed head. Towards the very end of the growing season, some gardeners choose to cease deadheading. This allows the plant to produce seeds, which can attract birds or encourage natural self-seeding for next year’s growth.
How to Deadhead Tickseed
To effectively deadhead tickseed, gather the appropriate tools. Clean, sharp bypass pruners or sturdy scissors are ideal for precise cuts, though pinching off smaller spent flowers with your fingers can be sufficient. Always ensure your tools are clean to prevent the spread of plant diseases. Disinfecting tools with rubbing alcohol between plants or after working with diseased foliage is a good practice.
For individual spent flowers, locate the faded bloom and trace its stem down to the nearest healthy leaf or developing side shoot. Make a clean cut just above this point, leaving at least one healthy set of leaves to continue photosynthesis. This encourages the plant to branch out and produce new flower buds from the leaf axil. When a tickseed plant has numerous spent blooms or appears leggy, a more aggressive approach known as “shearing” can be employed.
Shearing involves cutting back a larger section of the plant, typically by about one-third of its height. This technique is effective for encouraging a strong flush of new growth and a subsequent wave of rebloom. After shearing, the plant may look bare for a short period, but it will quickly rebound with fresh foliage and abundant new flowers. While deadheading, also remove any yellowing, damaged, or diseased foliage to maintain plant health and improve air circulation.