I/m assuming by "bud" you mean the dead flower. If you remove buds (unopened flowers or leaves) you are pinching back which causes the plant to become shorter and bushier.

Remove the "stem" of the flower back to the next unopened flower bud. Depending upon the plant and how the flowers grow this may or may not be right underneath the finished flower or further down the stem.

I'm thinking of Verbena specifically right now, which has little "clusters" of flowers. So when it's "done", I just pinch off it and the stem below it?

Dead-heading & pinching are different. Dead-heading removes spent bloom heads and to be effective, must include the fruiting portion of the plant (developing seeds or fruit). Pinching removes the growing tip of the stem (apical meristem) which is where a growth regulator (auxin) is produced that suppresses growth further back along the stem. Once the source of the suppression is removed, another growth regulator (cytokinin) becomes dominant & stimulates dormant buds in leaf axils to begin growth, This is what makes the plant bushy/full/compact instead of long/lanky.

When dead-heading verbena, remove the spent bloom and the stem back to the first or second set of leaves behind the bloom.

Al

The deadheading process is made even easier with a pair of sharp snips...so that you will be 'cutting' the spent flower head and stem from the plant, and not 'pinching' it. Snipping makes the job easier, faster, and better for the plant.

I will take the above advice and my pruning scissors with me out to the verbena tonight and do some work!

So if I'm "getting it", dead-heading allows the plant to put its energy toward starting another bloom, correct?

Where do I go to learn about each of my individual plantings and how to care for them specifically? I have my Western Garden Book, but, for instance, when I look up "verbena" it doesn't tell me about dead-heading or how to care for it so that it has the most flowers, etc, does it?

Anne

Practically speaking you are correct in your thinking that dead-heading stops energy flow to seed/fruit development & allows the plant to use it to produce additional foliage and blooms. we can even have an influence on which the plant "chooses" to direct energy toward by manipulating our supplemental nutrients. Fertilizers with a high second number (P) tend to favor production of reproductive parts (blooms) while those with a high first number (N) tend to cause the plant to grow leafy mass.

I'm not sure where you'll find the best place to learn about individual plants. These forums are a good start if you can sort through the conflicting advice. As I think back on how I learned to care for individual plants, I'm almost embarrassed to say I learned most of it by trial and error. However, at some point, I decided to learn what makes plants work and got into increasingly technical areas of botany. For me, the biggest strides in my ability to keep plants happy and looking good came during the years I was learning most about physiology and soils.

For a look at a dead-heading tool you'll never be without once you try it (it's twice as fast as scissors & half the effort), scroll down the page on the link I provided and look at tool # BM44-7". If this tool was $100, I would still buy it - it is that good for dead-heading.

Al

Here is a link that might be useful: Dead-heading tool

I would likely put out my own eye with that baby! It looks like it means business!

I find the scientific part of gardening to be fascinating (if, usually, completely over my head), and always read your posts from beginning to end! I will definitely learn things in these forums- I'm so thankful for this web site!

Anne

The internet is a wonderful source of information, as well, but you will also find a great deal of conflicting information there! I'd advise that you use your book, then do a google search on your particular plant individually. Read several of the links for a good, general idea of how to care for it. But, no information will be as good as your own experiences, in your own yard, with your own two hands!

FYI, the tool I use for deadheading is very similar to Al's and I recommend it to anyone. You might find the attached link useful, as well!

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1061160}}

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Thanks for the laugh!

Deadheading sounds easy- but once you do it for a few hours at a stretch, it ain't so easy anymore!

The leaf cutter Al showed us is based on sheep shears I think. I got a pair in Norway, thinking they would be good for deadheading. I showed them to a wool dyeing enthusiast, and she said they were sheep shears.

Now you can quit for the day since you've learned something!

Here is a link that might be useful: sheep shears

Though they resemble shearing scissors in shape and function, they are much smaller, streamlined, fit the hand perfectly, and are very easily manipulated around & through plant parts to quickly cut through flower or leaf stems. I can honestly say that I would mourn the loss of this tool more than any other single tool I use in my growing endeavors. It is perfectly suited to the art of dead-heading and eliminates half the effort while fractionalizing the amount of time invested. End of commercial. ;o)

Al

Sorry to say, the ones shown in link are apparently no longer available -- but they were small, neat, effective, and could be used for hours with little effort. I notice LV offers a very deluxe (and larger) Japanese version. Frankly, my third favorite dead-header is the smallest of the chinese scissors from LV, they carry neatly in my pocket and cut through heavy stems with ease. (fyi- 1st favorite is my thumb-nail.)

Here is a link that might be useful: neat nippers

Re:

"Where do I go to learn about each of my individual plantings and how to care for them specifically?"

Try _The Well-Tended Perennial Garden_ by Tracy DiSabato-Aus. It has very specific instructions for a lot of plants.

Burnet

In general, annuals will respond to deadheading by growing more flowers but most perennials will not, or will have one small additional burst of bloom. The reason for this is that annuals have only one growing season to set seed so their evolution has favoured plants that bloom over and over again until seed is set. Perennials always have next summer to set seed if this summer doesn't work out due to drought, cold, herbivors, insects etc, so their evolutionary history has favoured plants that bloom once then spend the rest of the season expanding roots and vegative parts so as to be bigger next season.

Dead heading is never a bad thing to do unless you want the plant to self seed or you want to leave the seeds for birds to eat.

I looked up The Well-Tended Perennial Garden on Amazon and it looks like it gets rave reviews, but with one exception that concerns me especially: a buyer from Austin, Texas returned hers because she felt it was geared towards people who garden in areas that have a "real winter" and that not many plants referenced in it could be grown "south of the Mason-Dixon line".

Since I'm in Southern California, might this book not work out for me? Anybody have it that could comment?

Anne : )

I have a mature russian sage. I cut it down to the base every spring. The plant flops to the ground. Should I leave it longer to support the stems?
Also, now that it is blooming and flopping, I am thinking of cutting it back to twelve inches - will it bloom again this year?
Thanks.