DEAD HEADING - CAMPANULAS, ROSES, AND OTHER FLOWERING PLANTS

Dead heading is an important task in the garden if you want your plants to keep on flowering.  If you don't dead-head, then the plant believes that it has done its job, starts to make seeds, and that's it for another year.  By dead heading, the plant is forced to keep making flowers, to make more seeds, and so it goes.  I am growing Canterbury Bells (Campanula Medium 'White) this year, as well as other campanulas and many other types of flower plants.  I have dead-headed my roses for years as a matter of habit but I nearly overlooked the campanulas this year because they grow on long stems.  I had simply thought that when they finished flowering, I would chop down the stems to ground level but I suddenly noticed that the stems are creating more and more buds, dozens of them, while the earlier flowers are dying back and using the plant's energy to make seeds. 





Dead-heading Campanula persicifolia 'Alba'

Giant seed-heads of Canterbury Bell - Campanula Medium 'White'



Dead-head Canterbury Bells - Campanula Medium 'White' - with new flower buds being formed