Click below to listen to my 2 min. Garden Bite radio show: Pinching, is it rude?
It certainly depends on what you’re pinching! 😉
Pinching, pruning, deadheading are all a good thing FOR THE MOST PART. I would caution you to quit pinching your Mums right now. If you don’t you might now have any flowers coming for fall.
Pinching your herbs is a great way to keep them growing bushier. You want the leaves more than the flowers. So pinch, prune or use scissors to cut back the flowers. Snip back to the next set of 2 leaves and they’ll form lateral or side shoots. NOTE: roses are different, see below
Now for deadheading, the idea is to pinch or prune out the dead flower so the plant doesn’t send its energy to creating a seed but instead to creating another flower. Again, follow down the tip to the next set of leaves and snip off just above them. Most of the time the tips of plants that you’re pinching are soft, therefore it’s usually just as easy to literally use your fingers to pinch the plant than to pull out the pruners. Your choice. I use both depending on how easy they pinch off! More on deadheading from Texas A&M
One plant I find too annoying to pinch is dianthus. It’s beautiful but difficult to keep pinching.
I ended up pulling it out. After a while it looks bedraggled and I just didn’t want to spend an hour trying to deadhead it!
This perfectly explains deadheading roses. I do this to my carpet roses and get 2 and sometimes 3 bloom periods per season!!
