Why Fewer Flowers Now Mean More Flowers Later

Spring is here! 

The garden centers and plant sales are alive with color. Those pots bursting with open blooms are hard to resist—they deliver instant cheer and promise a garden full of flowers right away. But the plants that give the strongest, longest-lasting performance often have the fewest (or no) open flowers when you buy them.

Here’s why this counterintuitive choice usually leads to better results.

Roots Come First

Young plants work with a limited energy budget. In their early stages, they direct most of it toward developing a solid root system and sturdy stems and leaves. Once heavy flowering begins, that energy shifts to sustaining blooms and setting seed.

The vivid flowers you see at the sale are beautiful, but they signal that energy has already gone into reproduction rather than root building. Plants still focused on vegetative growth are investing in the foundation that matters most after transplanting: strong roots for anchoring, efficient water and nutrient uptake, and the capacity to support bushier growth and abundant blooms later in the season.

Transplant Shock Needs Priority

Bringing a plant home means adjusting to new light, wind, soil, moisture, and temperature conditions—all stressful. Recovery and new root growth require energy.

A plant already loaded with blooms has to split its resources between keeping those flowers going and establishing roots. This often shows up as dropped buds, faded blooms, or a temporary slowdown. A non-blooming or lightly budded plant can devote nearly everything to settling in quickly, leading to faster establishment, denser branching, and a far more generous flowering season overall.

Pinch Without Hesitation

Picked up a gorgeous blooming plant anyway? Before you plant, simply pinch or snip off the open flowers and any visible buds. It may feel like a small loss, but this redirects energy straight back to roots and fresh shoots. Most plants bounce back within a couple of weeks—often stronger, bushier, and more floriferous than if the original blooms had remained.

Smart Shopping Checklist

When you’re browsing, look for these signs of a plant built for success:

• Compact and sturdy growth (avoid tall, leggy ones stretched from low light or crowding)
• Deep green, healthy foliage (no yellowing, spotting, or wilting)
• Well-rooted but not severely root-bound (check the drainage holes—roots should fill the pot nicely without a tight circling mass)

The Payoff

Gardening rewards patience every time. Choosing plants focused on root development—or giving blooming ones a quick reset with pinching—sets the stage for healthier establishment, fuller structure, and sustained waves of color all season long.

Healthy roots first. The abundant flowers will follow.

Happy planting this spring! Your garden will shine because of these thoughtful decisions.

The Joy of Growing Nostalgic Sweet Peas

The very mention of the name sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus) summons romance and the memories made in your grandmother’s flower garden. Vintage in appearance and highly scented in smell, sweet peas are one of the easiest and most productive annual flowers to grow.

Preferring and conducive to cooler temperatures, this nostalgic favorite can be directly sown into soil as soon as ground can be worked. They prefer a deep, rich, preferably loamy sand soil (with ample amounts of compost), and good drainage. It will speed up germination if you soak your seeds in warm water for a few hours before planting at a depth of between ½” to 1”. Sweet peas need a bit of darkness to sprout. Expect germination within 10-21 days if soil temperatures remain 50-60° F. Sweet peas need roughly 50 days of cooler temps under 60 degrees to have a continual bloom. In the Intermountain West, these cooler days coupled with copious amounts of mulch will ensure prolific flowering all the way into the warmer season of summer. Heirloom Spencer and Grandiflora sweet peas are two highly prized varieties. Both are highly scented and will grow 3-5’ tall.

Sweet peas are a wistful and vigorous growing, climbing, and vining flower, using tendrils to wind around tall supports. Because of this, they need a trellis or other support system for climbing. Think lattice work, homemade twig obelisk, a tall woven arbor made from willow, a hand-hewn split rail fence, or any other vertical supports that your grandmother might have worked with in her garden. The more old-fashioned, creative, and clever, the better!  Also, once your plants are 6-8” tall, pinch off the top 1”, which will force the stems outward and stimulate growth, which will produce even more branches, tendrils, and flowers.

Sweet peas are very sentimental and have proven year after year to be a favorite for home gardeners, cut flower farms, and florists. Plant some in your early spring garden and they will soon be a favorite of yours. What a wonderful way to start making sweetly-scented, old-fashioned, and long-lasting, garden memories for your loved ones! 

Want amazing color in your garden “where the sun don’t shine?”

Coleus (Coleus blumei)  Coleus plants are eye-dazzlers and easy to grow with impossibly colorful leaves. They are not grown for their flowers but for their leaves.In fact you should pinch flowers off when they appear so that plant energy goes to the leaves. The leaf patterns and colors are distinctly on the wild side — spotted, splashed, and edged in shades of color ranging from purple, yellow, pink, intense red, and luminous chartreuse. Coleus thrives in heat and part shade and only need regular watering to flourish all summer. Some coleus trail so they make the perfect “spiller” for shady area pots.

 

Coleus can stand alone in the shade garden but are spectacular added to the Hostas or Ferns in the shade garden.  Coleus come in so many colors and shapes that they can be placed from the back to the front of your shade garden and make a statement or blend nicely with the perennials you already have planted.  

Coleus are fairly easy to start indoors from seed or plants are readily available just about anywhere nursery plants are sold.  Coleus will be the first plant to succumb to fall frost but if you move them indoors prior to that frost they make colorful houseplants over the winter.

 

 Cornell University has great information for choosing the right coleus variety and growing them in your home garden. 

There are new varieties that grow well in the sun as shown in this video.

Let's get growin' coleus!