7 Plants to Pinch Out Now – This 5-Minute June Task Will Reward You With More Flowers All Summer
Bumper blooms on bushier plants – what’s not to love
Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. In gardening, as in many walks of life, tough love has long-term benefits. By pinching out the growing tips of plants in early summer, you’ll get bushier growth and more flowers later in the season.
Popular flowers like cosmos, dahlias, zinnias, chrysanthemums, and asters all benefit from being pinched out in June. It is a quick, easy job for your summer gardening checklist that you can do with your fingertips or a set of sharp pruning tools.
Pinching out plants might seem counterintuitive, but it is a vital way to get more flowers, better blooms, and stronger stems. It can even stop plants from getting leggy and flopping during the summer. For all those perfectly good reasons, here are 7 flowers to pinch out in June.
1. Dahlias
If left untouched, a dahlia will produce a single stem. It’ll be nice, but it could be much more. However, pinch out dahlias, and you’ll get more stems and more flowers. That’s what you want when you grow dahlias, strong plants with lots of stems covered in glorious blooms.
Don’t be afraid to pinch back the plants; it is what you want to do with dahlias in June, and the rewards are worth it. Not only do you get more flowers, but the plants overall will be sturdier and less prone to snapping.
Once the main stem of the plant reaches 12-16 inches tall and has three sets of leaves, pinch out the central growing tip above a set of leaves. You can use your fingers, but I prefer a pair of pruning snips to guarantee a clean cut.
These Fiskars pruning snips, available at Amazon, have a micro-tip blade for precise pruning jobs like this.
2. Cosmos
Cosmos are reliable, productive annual plants for any flower beds or container gardens. They’ll consistently have bright, saucer-shaped blooms. But why settle for that when you can ramp up that display even further by pinching out cosmos in early summer?
If you grow cosmos, these low-maintenance plants can be spurred into vigorous branching by being pinched out. Left to their own devices, cosmos can get leggy and just bloom at the top. Pinch them out, especially tall types of cosmos, and you’ll have bushier plants covered in flowers all summer long.
Pinch them out once they reach 8 to 10 inches all. Even if yours are a bit bigger, if you haven’t pinched them, do it ASAP this month. They recover quickly from being pinched, and you’ll see the first new side shoots appear within a week.
You can use a pair of gardening scissors to pinch out all kinds of annual plants, such as these Miracle-Gro steel garden scissors at Walmart.
3. Zinnias
Zinnias are popular, proven annuals to provide vivid pops of summer color. They are quick, easy flowers to grow, and pinching out zinnias can increase the number of blooms you get and the quality of the stems – ideal if you are growing zinnias for cut flowers.
Once the plants are 10-15 inches tall and have 2-3 sets of true leaves, that is the ideal time to pinch out the main stem above a leaf node. The plant will respond by quickly developing side shoots, meaning a bushier plant that can carry more flowers through summer and fall.
If your plant is a bit too tall, you can cut the stem back to the second set of leaves to encourage the plant to branch lower down and prevent the zinnia from getting too leggy.
4. Chrysanthemums
Chrysanthemums can get tall, leggy, and even flop over if they are not pinched. Taking the time to pinch the tips encourages a more compact habit and branching to carry more flowers in the fall.
You should start pinching chrysanthemums when they are around 6-8 inches tall, and then again when new stems reach the same length. June is the perfect time to start pinching when growing chrysanthemums, as the more side shoots you encourage, the more flowers you get to enjoy.
It would be a chrysanthemum mistake not to pinch, but you do also need to know when to stop. You can pinch plants until midsummer, then stand back and watch those glorious blooms burst from late summer through fall.
While you can simply use your fingers to pinch out stems, these gardening gloves available at Amazon have an innovative integrated thumb knife for quick pruning. They also have a protective sheath for added safety.
5. Pelargoniums
Pelargoniums, also known as bedding or tender geraniums, make fantastic summer plants for patio containers or hanging baskets. You can get pelargoniums in a wide range of colors, with lots of options when it comes to variegated, decorative, and fragrant foliage.
I am a fan of this Pelargonium citrosum, available at Amazon, that has a strong citrus fragrance and tooth-edged leaves.
There are bushy and trailing types of pelargoniums – the latter of which make great cascading plants for containers – and both can be encouraged to branch by pinching out the stems.
Once a plant reaches 6-8 inches, pinch or snip the tip above a node so the stem branches into many side shoots. You’ll end up with a bushier plant with many more flowers during the summer.
To keep the flowers coming for the longest possible time, it is advisable to deadhead geraniums throughout the summer. Remove the spent flower stems all the way back to their base with your fingers or a pair of snips.
6. Fuchsias
Hardy and half-hardy fuchsias both benefit from pinching out to create bushier plants with lots of flowering stems. Ideally, when you care for fuchsias, pinching out should start in spring and be done a couple of times before early summer.
However, if you are growing fuchsias and haven’t touched yours yet, there is still time to stimulate side shoots by removing the tips of shoots. You don’t want to pinch out after the end of June – so if you need to, make it a job for the coming days.
The new shoots usually develop quickly, within two weeks. If you have pinched yours, there will be an opportunity to pinch out the new soft shoots that have developed before the window closes. Fingers crossed you’ll have a bushy plant with lots of blooms to enjoy.
Although not a necessity, you can encourage the plants to bloom for longer by deadheading fuchsia plants through the summer.
7. Aster
Asters offer a valuable service in gardens. They come to the fore in late summer, when some other summer-blooming plants start to wane, and their bright daisy-like blooms brighten up fall beds and borders.
Some aster varieties get very tall, up to six feet. They can fall over and split during the season, which isn’t an attractive trait. To combat this, plants can be kept more compact and bushier by pinching them back in June.
If you are growing asters in large numbers in your borders and don’t fancy painstakingly pinching every stem, you can opt to cut back the plant’s overall growth by a third.
This technique, known as the ‘Chelsea Chop’, delays flowering, but you’ll get lots of flowers on shorter, sturdier plants than if you’d left your asters alone. You can do this with pruning shears or a pair of hedge shears, such as these Fiskars steel serrated hedge shears at Ace Hardware.
What to Shop
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These long-sleeved gardening gloves protect your hands and arms during any tasks. Plus, they have a gorgeous floral pattern - so you look stylish and protected.
These all-steel bypass pruning shears can be used for all manner of pruning tasks, from snipping small stems to cutting ones up to 25 mm wide.
June is a busy month, and there is almost always some pruning to be done somewhere in the garden. Our guide to plants to prune in June reveals seven such plants that will benefit from some TLC this month.
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