I recently bought a house with an extensive flower garden. What do I do after the flowers have bloomed?

Question

What I mean, is there are still healthy leaves, but all the blooms are gone. I don't want to pull them up from the root because I am afraid they won't come back again next year. Do I just trim them down or what? Also, while I'm at it, what do I do with all the smaller growths of baby trees along side of my big trees. I can't pull them out because they are so deeply rooted but they look like a mess and I'd like to get rid of them.

Answer 1

Many plants will bloom again if the dead heads are removed.  When all the flowers have bloomed, you can leave the dead heads for the birds.   Or you can cut down the flower stems, leaving the leaves.  If they are perennials, don't remove all the leaves until they have died back in the fall.  You are right that if you pull them up by the root, they won't come back unless they have self-seeded.

Those annoying little tree sprouts can be mowed if they are small enough or sprayed with a weed killer such as Roundup.  If you mow them, they may come back.   The weed killer will kill anything that it touches the leaves of, so be careful about getting it on foliage of something you like.

Answer 2

Lucky you!  If you can, make it a daily or weekly practice to remove the dead blooms from the flowering plants.  For most plants, this will encourage reblooming (although most perennials don't typically bloom for the whole summer).  Leave the greenery until the frost turns it brown in the fall--then remove the brown right down to the ground.  Try to learn what the leaves of each plant look like, so that next spring, you'll be able to recognize the flowering plants from weeds (and you can pull the weeds early on).

As for the little volunteer trees, you can try Round Up.  If that doesn't work, there is a product called Tordon (or something close to that), and you apply it to a freshly cut stump.  So, you would go ahead and cut off these volunteers, then apply the poison to the stem remaining, and the poison will kill the root.