Tips for pinching flowers at home to make them bloom more colorful

Tipping method

The method is to pinch off the top of the seedling with your fingers when it grows to the expected height. Mainly used for herbaceous flowers. It is also used for pruning woody flower seedlings, which can help grow more side branches and make the plant shape beautiful in the future. The method is to remove 1/3 or 1/2 of the top when the seedlings grow to about 10 cm, which is 0.5 cm above the axillary buds. Can be done multiple times as required.

After the top of the main trunk of most flower seedlings is picked off (or cut), the apical dominance of the plant will be transferred to the buds below the cut, and 3-4 branches will grow below the cut to replace the growth of the central main branch. Before transplanting or planting flowers, pinching off the front end of the central trunk to promote the sprouting of side branches is called the first pinching. If you pinch off the top of each sprouted side branch again after a period of time, more side branches will grow, which is called the second pinching.

For general herbaceous flowers, such as impatiens, snapdragon, pepper, vinca roseus, etc., after the seedlings are established and survive, they can be topped when the plant height is about 10 cm to encourage more branches and flowering. For example, for begonia, fuchsia, chrysanthemum, etc., after the seedlings are established and survive, they should be pinched to promote more side branches, enrich the plant shape, and increase the number of flowers. However, pinching is not recommended for some flowers whose flowers will become smaller or fail to bloom after pinching, such as Impatiens, Cockscomb, and Jiangxi wax twig.

Some individual seedlings of woody flowers are changed into clusters by being cut at the base. Such as rose, osmanthus, holly, oleander, hibiscus and so on. Some seedlings are pruned when they grow to 20-30 cm in height, and 3-4 side branches are grown. When the side branches grow to 10 cm in length, the top of each branch is pruned again. Soon, a spherical plant with 9-12 side branches and "three forks and nine tops" will be formed, such as azalea and gardenia.