Get More Flowers From Your Garden Plants, All Summer Long, With These 6 Expert Tricks

So you’ve filled your garden with flowering plants and now you get to sit back and enjoy the show, right? Not quite. These expert tricks will encourage your plants to produce far more flowers over a much longer time period, and they don’t take much time, effort or expense.

Most flowering plants are so focused on producing blooms so they can set seed and perpetuate their species, it’s easy to trick them into growing lots more flowers. Then all you need do is ensure they’re fuelled with all the sunshine, nutrients and moisture they need to grow all those extra petals.

So, if want your garden to be filled with flowers like never before, here's exactly what to do.

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1. Snip Off Fading Flowers

Plants only grow flowers so they can set seed and help their species survive. So, if you interrupt that process and prevent a plant setting seed, most will keep trying, again and again, growing lots more blooms. It's simple to do by cutting off the flowers as they start to fade, a process known as deadheading, which redirects the plant’s energy from creating seeds to growing more blooms. The more often you deadhead flowers, the more blooms you'll get: daily in peak summer will bring best results but a weekly snipping session will still make a huge difference.

Even reblooming plants such as some rose varieties, and self-cleaning bedding plants, will flower more profusely if you deadhead – yes, even those labelled 'no need to deadhead'!

For most plants, the best method is to nip off the spent flower with your finger and thumb. You can also use hand pruners, garden scissors, or a nifty little thumb-blade gadget. With plants that grow single blooms atop a long stem such as gazanias, cut the stalk off too. With plants that create spires of flowers such as foxgloves and lupines, wait until most of the flowers have faded, then remove the entire stem just above a sideshoot if there is one.

If in doubt, snipping the stem just above the set of leaves or stem junction below a spent bloom is a good failsafe option for any plant.

To deadhead effusive plants like hardy geraniums, which would take forever to remove individual blooms, it’s easier to cut all the stems and spent foliage with a pair of hedge shears such as these Garden Guru shears from Amazon.

2. Shorten Stems to Stagger Flowering

Another way of manipulating flowering by cutting stems is to cut back a portion of the plant before it blooms. This delays flowering on this part of the plant, so extending the blooming period, and this method works well with perennial plants that produce an abundance of flowers on multiple stems such as catmint, asters, phlox, achillea and heleniums.

Simply cut half of the plant stems to a third of their height using hand pruners or hedge shears, leaving the rest to flower as normal. Giving the front of the plant this treatment means the later flowers will hide tiring foliage behind, or take out every other stem for a more natural look.

Often called the Chelsea chop because it's normally performed in May around the time of the world-famous flower show, it’s not too late in June to cut back later-flowering plants. The general rule of thumb is to chop perennials before they’ve developed visible flower buds, which typically happens around 6-8 weeks before they would ordinarily bloom.

3. Force More Flowering Tips

Many plants focus their seed-setting efforts on growing the flower at the tip of each stem, with back-up buds lower down. While that main flower blooms and looks set on producing seed, those side-buds will remain dormant. Remove that tip, however, and the plant will immediately put Plan B into action, activating those side-shoots for bushier growth with lots more flowers.

This is called stopping, or pinching the tip, and it’s easily done with finger and thumb. Do this with annuals such as cosmos, zinnias, marigolds and petunias, and perennials like dahlias, asters, phlox and chrysanthemums. It’s best done early on when the plant is actively growing its main stem(s), before it sets its flowerbuds. So, for many of those fling-and-forget seeds you’ve just surface-sown to fill border gaps, as well as later-blooming perennial plants, there’s still time to pinch tips in June and early July to encourage more flowers.

Bear in mind that while you’ll get lots more flowers by using this method, the payoff is that blooms may be a little smaller and their individual stems a little shorter. That’s not a problem for most gardeners but, if you’re growing your own cut flowers, you might want to prioritise long stems over abundant blooms.

4. Feed Plants With the Right Fertilizer

Plants need many nutrients for healthy growth but broadly speaking, they use nitrogen for leaf and stem growth, phosphorus for root and bud formation, and potassium for overall health, including water absorption. The levels of these three elements are represented by three numbers on fertilizer packaging, which is known as the NPK ratio. The first number is nitrogen (N), the second is phosphorus (P) and the third is potassium (K).

So, a fertilizer with a high phosphorus level will encourage a plant to grow lots of flowers. But here’s the thing that most people miss: nitrogen is important, too, for plenty of leaves to solar-power that flower production; and potassium helps each of those blooms last longer on the plant, and improves the color saturation too.

For the most flowers, first feed your plants in spring with a more general feed such as Miracle-Gro All-Purpose Plant Food, which has an NPK ratio of 24-8-16. This will foster big, healthy plants. Then switch to a fertilizer that prioritises flower growth such as Miracle-Gro Bloom Booster Flower Food, which has an NPK ratio of 10-52-10.

Only use soluble fertilizers once every week or two, and be careful not to exceed the recommended concentrations as overfeeding your plants can cause them to bloom less abundantly.

5. Water Well, Especially if You Fertilize

Every plant needs water to transport nutrients from the soil to its flowerbuds. When it’s stressed by not having sufficient water, one of the first things many plants do is drop their flowerbuds to conserve their energy. So, you need to keep your plants hydrated if you want them to bloom abundantly.

Taking steps to maintain soil moisture levels (which also reduces how often you need to water) such as adding moisture-controlling ingredients to hanging baskets, topping patio pots with clay pebbles, and using ollas in raised beds will all help your plants to flower more.

How you water will also have an impact on how abundantly a plant flowers. Most plants are smart enough to grow their roots towards wherever they can find the most moisture. If you only water enough to wet the top inch of soil, plants will typically grow shallow roots and be subjected to big swings in moisture levels. And yes, you’re right, that can also cause it to abort flowerbuds. Water deeply, though, and your plants will typically grow deeper roots where soil moisture levels stay more consistent.

Consider, too, how much you’re prepared to water before deciding whether to fertilize. A bigger plant with more flowers requires more moisture so, if you’re not going to ensure they’re regularly watered, you shouldn’t feed your plants. This applies doubly if you’re growing plants in containers, which are more reliant on you for moisture.

6. Ensure Plants Get Sufficient Sunshine

Most flowering plants need some sunshine to bloom well, and in the shade, will prioritize growing leaves over flowers. That’s because it takes an enormous amount of energy to produce a flower. If plant isn’t getting enough sunshine to photosynthesize and create that energy, it’ll prioritize stem and leaf growth to search for more light.

As well as reading a plant’s label or online description and heeding its light requirements when choosing a planting position in your garden, do keep a check on how much sun it’s actually getting as the season progresses. It’s often the case that early-flowering plants with large leaves such as hollyhocks can throw later-flowering plants into deep shade, which affects how much – or how little! – they bloom. Judicious removal of a few leaves once that early bloomer is fading can make all the difference.