Pinching out

This is my first year of growing annuals from seed. I'm absolutely loving it!

I am however not sure about pinching out. Can anyone advise me on the following?

Sweet peas (pinching out after second set of leaves formed

Antirrhinum

Poached egg plant (still waiting for it to germinate! nearly three weeks later!)

Black-eyed susan (red variety)

Cosmos (Sea Shells)

Morning Glory (deep burgandy colour) again - still waiting for it to germinate

Lavetera

Phlox

I would really appreciate any advice, text book or just your own way of doing things. Thanks in advance.

 

Hi Victoria. I don't have advice for specific plants. But the principle of pinching out is that it makes the plant shorter and bushier. What happens is that the leading bud at the top of the plant produces chemicals that inhibit buds from being created lower down. If you remove the leading bud it stops these chemicals from being produced, which in turn allows the buds lower down to grow. However each lower branch produced will have a leading bud of its own, which you could in turn pinch out if you wanted.

Whether you pinch out or not really depends on if you want a tall plant or a shorter one. My own preferance is to pinch out when the plant is very young to get more than one stem, then I don't bother. Of the plants you mention above, I only grow Antirrhinum, Cosmos, Lavateria and Phlox, and except for a first pinching out, I wouldn't bother to do any more. When a perennial like Phlox grows in the garden, after a while its footprint will expand and produce more than one stem - so no pinching out is neccessary.

But there are people who like to do it a lot. There is a school of thought that you can take a pair of shears to a half grown plant, and cut it back by a third. This will delay the flowering a bit, but will give much shorter plants that don't fall over or need support. Sedum is a famous example, which is often given the 'Chelsea chop', ie a chop at the time of the Chelsea Flower Show, to prevent it from going floppy. You can apply the same principle to virtually any plant.

 

Thank you Peter.

That makes total sense and will equip me to decide for each type of seedling what would be best.

:thku:

 

Its a pleasure Victoria