How to Deadhead Roses in 5 Steps

Deadheading is a gardening technique that involves removing spent or drooping flowers from growing plants to encourage renewed growth. You can deadhead flowers with a simple pair of garden pruners in most cases.

Trimming away dead flower heads throughout the blooming season promotes the development of new flower buds and keeps your garden beautiful for months on end.

Gardeners deadhead flowers to encourage new blooms and healthy growth. When a flower withers and begins to produce seeds during a normal bloom cycle, the plant devotes its energy to producing seeds rather than flowers.

When you deadhead flowers, you refocus the flowering plant's energy; instead of turning spent blooms into seed heads, it will return to flower production instead.

Deadhead roses as soon as you notice that the current blooms are fading. Roses with wilting petals that are going brown around their borders are dying off. If you want to alter your rose bush’s blooming cycle so that you always have active blooms, deadhead the plants on a schedule by removing the flowers when they open completely before they start to die off.

All rose plants are perennials that bloom yearly (as opposed to annuals, which will bloom for one cycle) on a six-to-eight week schedule during their growing season. Plan to deadhead your roses seven weeks ahead of the season, even if they have full beautiful blooms. Your rose bushes will have new flowers within six to eight weeks.

Follow these easy DIY steps for deadheading a rose bush:

1. 1. Gather your equipment. Collect gardening shears or secateurs, gardening gloves, and a bucket to dispose of the rose cuttings.
2. 2. Identify faded flowers. Find which flowers you want to deadhead (unless you're deadheading all of them to prepare for a new bloom). Faded blooms include any with dry or withered petals and roses without any petals.
3. 3. Find the five-leaf junction. Find the first set of five healthy leaves on the flower stems with spent blooms. New growth will sprout from this area, and the plentiful leaves mean that the bush is already directing enough energy to this area.
4. 4. Begin deadheading. Snip your rose stem just above the nearest shoot on the stem with five leaves on it. Leave about one-quarter of an inch of stem above this junction. Discard the deadheaded flowers and flower stalks into the bucket. Continue until you have removed all faded and dead blooms.
5. 5. Prune the rose bush. You can also take the opportunity to prune the rose bush further. Cut back any dead stems and leaves, as well as woody canes. Pruning roses will help encourage extra new growth.

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