Should I cut off flowers on my rose and daisy plants?

Question

Should I do it before or after the flower blooms, or after it is obviously dead?

What happens if I do not cut them? What is best?

Answer 1

You should cut them back after the flowers are spent.  In the case of roses, you can cut them for vases or arrangements while they are still buds and the bud will open.

Daisies: you can also let the flowers die back and go to seed.  This will be at the expense of more bloom (fewer, at least) and will cause the plants to get rangy and the stems weaker.  Cutting them back after they have finished blooming is the best way to keep healthy and attractive daisies.

Roses:  Once the flowers left on the bush have begun to wilt you should cut them back.  They will be healthier and bloom sooner if they are the type to rebloom.  Most roses bloom on new wood, so cutting them back after blooming promotes better growth and more blooms more often.

This is a great site with lots of info on roses

http://www.ars.org/index.html

http://www.ars.org/About_Roses/cutting.h...

Answer 2

Why would you cut off the flowers?

If anything, cut off the buds, or stems with hardly anything.

Are you asking because your flowers are overgrown?

Answer 3

You can cut the faded flowers off of your roses.  They will often grow more flowers.  Keeping them from spending energy developing the seed pods will mean they have more energy to spend on more flowers instead.

Daisies generally do not rebloom.  You can cut the faded flowers off just for aesthetics, if you don't like looking at the spent flowers, but it won't really make a difference to the plant, or encourage new blooms.  more like general housekeepping.

I do cut fresh daisies to put in vases inside the house, though.  Cut daisies in water are one of the longest-lasting cut flowers.   They can easily last 2 weeks in a vase.