Garden Tips Summertime without Deadheading

It’s summer, so you want your garden to be colorful and beautiful, but you really don’t want to spend hours under the hot sun pruning and deadheading your flowers. Deadheads are blooms that have already finished and need to be removed from the plant. Typically you have to pinch back or snip off the bloom yourself. If that doesn’t sound like how you want to spend your time, then you’ll want to plant some flowers that can take care of their own blooms. There are lots of plants that you don’t have to deadhead. One of them is the Supertunia (trade name). This plant is a vegetative Pentunia. It grows long runners that can stretch out to be three to five feet long, and blooms will grow all along that stretch of stem. When the blooms are finished, the plant gets rid of them itself then grows new blooms. Suptertunias can grow in a pot, hanging basket, or in the ground. In a pot or hanging basket, the runners will hang down and could reach down to the ground. In a garden the runners will stretch out and can be a good ground cover. Petunias come in a lot of different colors and bloom all summer long. Two other types of plants that you don’t have to deadhead are Euphorbia and Lantana. Euphorbias are considered daylight neutral, meaning they can grow in sun or shade, but they grow best with partial sun in an area that has good drainage. The Diamond Frost Euphorbia can bloom year round, depending on the climate. The flowers are very small, delicate, and white. In colder areas it will bloom until it freezes. The plant can be brought indoors during winter months. Lantana will also bloom from now until it freezes. Lantana’s flowers come in a mix of red, orange, and yellow, or blue and white. These few plants are just a fraction of those that can take care of themselves. Meaning they bloom all summer and get rid of their own dead blooms without you having to remove the deadheads. Planting some of these will keep your garden beautiful, but will keep your gardening workload light.