Deadheading is a gardening term used in pruning and grooming plants. It involves removing faded, wilted, or dead flower heads from a plant in order to encourage new growth and more blooms. Deadheading also helps to keep the plant looking tidy and healthy.

Why Is It Important to Remove Dead Flowers?

Yes, removing dead flowers from a bouquet will make your bouquet look better, but there is actually a bigger reason it is so important to making your cut flower live longer.

Removing dead flowers from a bouquet is vitally important because dead flowers produce ethylene gas, which can cause the other flowers in the bouquet to wilt and die faster data-offset-key=”3jjem-58-0″>. Ethylene gas is a naturally occurring plant hormone that causes flowers to age and die faster.

But ethylene gas does not just occur in flowers. It is also commonly used to ripen fruits and vegetables in grocery stores. Ethylene gas is important to the ripening process because it triggers the biochemical pathways that initiate the ripening process in fruits and vegetables. So while it can occur naturally as fruits and vegetables ripen, it is also introduced to produce to make sure grocery stores can sell better looking fruits and vegetables.

Why should you care about ethylene gas?

Because putting flowers too close to any fruits or vegetables can make your flowers break down faster.

Ethylene gas is also very volatile and can easily spread to other areas. For this reason, it is important to keep ethylene gas away from cut flowers, as it can cause them to wilt faster or even die. That’s why you should not buy flowers that are kept close to fresh produce.

I know it’s tempting – that why they are usually placed in such close proximity. But fresh fruits and vegetables don’t equal long living flowers. The next time you wonder why flowers die so quickly, where they were placed in the store is something to consider.

So what can you do to make flowers last longer once you bring them home? Deadheading should be added to your vocabulary. It’s really simple to do and doesn’t take much time at all.

What is deadheading?

Its is simply snipping any dead or wilted flowers from a bouquet. That’s it. When the dying flower is removed, the rest of the flowers are no longer going to be impacted by the ethylene gas the dead flower naturally produces, and they will live longer – until they eventually reach the end of their lifespan.

How much does deadheading help? I’ve found this means between 3 and 5 extra days in fresh cut flower life. It greatly impacts the quality of the flowers toward the end of month.

I will always deadhead and then treat again with Flower Boosters. This serves two purposes: 1) it cuts off the ethylene gas that is breaking down the other flowers to fast and 2) it gives the remaining flowers another boost that tends to revive them and give them a “second wind” to keep going a few more days.  Depending on the flower you choose, it can be the difference between 2 weeks and 3 weeks of vibrant flowers decorating your home or office.