Deadheading Petunias: How to Remove Spent Flowers

With a variety of different bloom colors to choose from, petunia plants (Petunia spp.) are a glorious addition to any garden bed, patio pot, or hanging basket.

These South American natives are easy to grow and sport colorful trumpet-shaped flowers throughout the summer months. And there’s not much that can blemish them, except perhaps for some spent flowers among the profusion of bright blooms.

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Blooms don’t last forever, and these spent flowers with their expired petals are all a part of nature’s plan, and they’ll eventually give way to small brown seed pods.

However, prompt deadheading can clear the way and redirect energy into additional flower production.

In our guide to growing petunias, we cover how to care for these easygoing plants in your outdoor space.

Ready to learn about deadheading petunias? Here’s what we’ll cover:

Why Deadhead Petunias?

While it’s not absolutely necessary to clip off the spent blooms, there are a handful of reasons why you might wish to deadhead your plants.

If you leave the expired blooms on the plant, then they’ll eventually yield seed pods, a process that uses energy that could otherwise be spent producing more flowers.

By removing them promptly, the plant will put all its energy into putting out more flowers, instead of setting seed.

In general petunias look better when they’re not peppered with the crispy brown remnants of petals past.

Pots on the patio and hanging baskets in the entryway can be kept looking sharp by prompt removal of spent blooms.

What You’ll Need

Some aspects of gardening require more stuff than others. But deadheading petunias? Besides the plants themselves… you don’t need a thing.

Well, I suppose you technically need two things: your thumb and pointer finger.

With these two digits, you’ll use a precise pinching motion to accomplish the actual deadheading. Sometimes nature provides us with the best tools.

It also comes in handy to keep a thumbnail long enough to sever the stem cleanly. But if you tend to clip, pick, and/or bite your nails into short, useless nubs like I do, then you may need a supplemental tool.

You could use your standard hand pruners, but using those on delicate petunia stems kinda feels like using a leaf blower for dusting.

It’s a bit overkill, and may accidentally cause damage to other parts of the plant in the process.

Garden Snips

Instead, go with something smaller like scissors or even these cute lil’ pocket snips, which are available in green or orange at Gardener’s Supply Company.

When and How to Deadhead

The “when” is pretty simple. Whenever a flower fades, it can be removed from the plant.

You can choose to deadhead flowers as you notice them, which might be convenient if your plants are growing in a spot where you see them all the time.

Or simply remove a bunch at a time, every week or so, perhaps when you’re doing the watering.

When you actually make the cut or pinch, do so at the base of the flower stem, right where it meets the larger central stem.

Since seed pods grow below the petals, deadheading too high won’t actually halt seed pod production – you’ve got to go all the way down and remove the entire flower.

Collect your dead heads as you move through your plants. Once you’re done, they can go right in the compost pile.

Snip, Snip, Hooray

Deadheading petunias is easy peasy. So easy, you can delegate the task to your children!

For not much effort, your plants will look neat and tidy, plus it promotes further blooming.. So don’t skip this gardening practice!

Are you growing petunias? Do you deadhead the spent flowers? Let us know in the comments section below!

And for more information about growing petunias in your garden, check out these guides next: