How to pinch out bedding plants for more flowers

How to pinch out bedding plants for more flowers

Bedding plants are easy, cheap and brighten up a windowsill or front door

If you buy your bedding plants early in the form of seedlings or plug plants you will need to keep pinching them in order to have strong bushy plants. If you don’t pinch out you will be left with tall straggly bedding plants with very few flowers. Pinching produces side shoots which will all bear flowers.

Do this 2 – 3 times until the 2nd/3rd week in April.

 

 You will need:

  • flower snips or sharp pointed scissors

Cut out the growing tip just above a leaf, if they have started to produce side shoots in the leaf axils, cut just above these shoots. If you don’t have scissors just pinch out with the nails of your thumb and forefinger.

 

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Profile Image Angela Slater

Angela Slater

Daughter of a farmer and market gardener so have always had a connection with the outdoors, whether it was keeping animals or producing fruit, vegetables and cut flowers. Along with my work at Hayes Garden World I also have a smallholding, mainly breeding rare breed pigs. I gained an HND and BSc in Conservation and Environmental Land Management, as a result I am an ardent environmentalist and have a keen interest in environmentally friendly gardening. In my time at Hayes I worked for several years in the Outdoor Plant and Houseplant areas.