Um, just do it - ? !!!

OK, clearly I'm an idiot! But do you do anything special? How do you know how far down to pinch? Do I have to pinch or can I use scissors? Are there a certain spot that's best for pinching, like above or below a set of leaves? Will it really make any difference? Have you pinchers seen good results from pinching? Now maybe you understand my trepidation. I'm not a pincher, never have been, and I don't know what I'm doing. Thanks.

The leggy impatiens will do their own thing pinch or not...
Pinching just means taking your thumb nail and pressing it against the index finger and removing the very center of the shoot of a growing plant, forcing it to branch.
If I had someone around to take a picture, I would go pinch some mums and post it....I've got dirty hands any how!
The only plants that I think really really HAVE to be pinched are mums.....
But I do the pinch thing to dead head....if I break my thumb nail....I am really lost!! LOL!
Linda C

Pinch just above leaves.

Think of pinching as "re-directing the plant's energy" -- when I buy an annual in flower, I make myself remove the flower when I plant it so that the plant gets the message: "Nope, sorry buddy, you can't count on THAT flower to make your seeds anymore, so you better grow yourself some new roots and try again." Then the plant makes more flowers for you, uh, I mean, for ITSELF. Then, whenever the plant tries to go past the flower stage and make those seeds, you deadhead each dead flower to thwart, uh, I mean RE-DIRECT it again. Scissors or fingernails work equally well.

Michael Pollan say some kind of thing like "Nature does not hesitate to interfere with me, so I do not hesitate to interfere with her."

I say: "Plants really, really want to live and grow, so don't be afraid you are hurting them."

Pinch away, I just pinched mine down and put them in soil and now I have a whole new flat with new little plants. You can double your original planting this way.

You mean you plant in the soil the part you pinched off and thus a new plant?

First, if you understand what I'm telling you, you'll never be afraid to pinch, & it's the very basic knowledge upon which all pruning is based.

Mainly, two growth regulators determine if a plant gets bushy (shrubby) or if it grows long. The growth regulators are like two well matched antagonists in a plant, each sort of canceling out the other's total dominance. In plants that want to grow long branches & stems, the growth regulator that causes this (auxin) maintains a slight edge over another growth regulator that wants the plant to grow bushy (cytokinin) & grow branches in the crotch (axil) where every leaf occurs.

"Pinching" doesn't necessarily mean that you only "pinch out" the growing tip of the stem, you can remove a good length of the stem and many sets of leaves & it's still "pinching". It also is different than the dead-heading or de-blooming Crocosmia described.

In the growing tips of plant stems and branches (the apical meristems) and in (especially young) leaves, the growth regulator (auxin) is produced. It suppresses lateral (side) growth on the stem behind it as it flows back down the plant toward the roots. When you remove the growing tip of the stem (often along with many other sets of leaves on the stem) you eliminate the source of the growth regulator. When that occurs, still another growth regulator (cytokinin) suddenly becomes dominant and "seizes the opportunity" to stimulate growth from the crotches of leaves (axils) all along the stem. In this way, you "force" (or trick) the plant into producing lots of branches.

Soon, the growing tips of these branches are producing auxin, suppressing all the lateral growth along the stem behind it, and just generally causing the plant to grow long branches again. At this point, you simply cut back the branches or pinch out the growing tip & the plant shows you another spurt of lateral growth.

Here is a good example of what pinching does. I start lots of Coleus cuttings to give as gifts to garden visitors. I pinch them hard so that they are getting a plant they likely can't find anywhere else, and tell them how to do it themselves. This plant would normally grow long branches with only minor lateral branching, but you can see I have it growing in a mound-form as a result of attention to pinching.
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If these were plants I allowed to bloom, there would be a profusion of blooms on a compact plant that would have a much greater visual impact than if the blooms were on a plant that was allowed to grow according to it's own habit.

From Crocosmia's post, "Nature does not hesitate to interfere with me, so I do not hesitate to interfere with her." is pretty appropriate when it comes to plant manipulation through pinching. Pruning your shrubs, trees and foundation plantings is simply a mechanical method of pinching and the same plant physiology I just described applies.

Al

Thanks, guys! Great information. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going out to pinch.

if you havent finished..... i suggest you do 5 plants.. 5 different ways.. and study the difference over the season ... and keep a few notes....

over time you will start to understand how good properly pruned stock will look vs. free range....

once you now how the plant responds ... you can even pick up nursery stock... and see how the professional did it ...

good luck

ken

I usually scratch my head at the haphazard ways the "pros" prune their nursery stock. Usually, it looks like it was done blindfolded, and I sure wouldn't recommend that anyone necessarily model their pruning after their patterns. ;o) Don't take my comment as quarrelsome, Ken - it's not. If you take a second to think about why nurseries prune like they do and the amount of time they spend on each plant, you'll know where I'm coming from. I actually wish nurseries would allow the plants to grow in their natural habit. It would take less time to produce the plant form we want and to undo what they've done to most of the material.

Pruning a Coleus or Impatiens to get specific results requires that you adhere to the same rules that apply when you prune a tree or shrub. Once you have a thorough grasp (back to Jen now) of what response the growth regulators auxin and cytokinin have on plant growth, all pruning will suddenly make perfect sense and you will be able to look at nearly any dicot and immediately see what you can do to improve its appearance & often o/a vitality.

Al

I am sure with you on this, Al! If only they would stop hacking at the plants before innocent customers can get their hands on them.

Do let us know how you fare, Jen.

Thanks, Dorie.

Al

Well, you guys certainly have some great information. Thanks for taking time to share. You'll be happy to know I went out and pinched many of my impatiens way back. Some coleus, too. Now it'll be fun to wait and see what happens. I almost started hacking at my fushia, too, but those blooms are a little hard to come by and I couldn't quite bring myself to cut off so many buds. Besides, it already looked pretty well branched. I looked at a few other plants, some million bells, geranium and creeping zinnia...but they looked pretty well branched, too, so they didn't get pinched. I didn't want to start pinching, just to be pinching, ya know? Anyway, thanks again for all the good information.

hey .. it wasn't quarrelsome ... don't worry about that ... as long as it isn't personal ... and it wasn't ... anyway ...

even better to look at how the nursery does it wrong.. sooner or later you will know enough to understand such ... and then all of a sudden you notice your thumb is green ... not only from the learning.. but from the pinching.. lol ...

and a secondary reason .. is to see how good they end up looking ... no matter how they were butchered ... lol ...

most nurseries are lacking in extra space. . they need to prune for that as much as form ...

GOOD LUCK!!!!!!

ken

Hi ,I have snapdragons with the fifth set of leaves coming .I feel I should pinch them.Should I go all the way to above the first leaves or higher up?Also ,I have some Salpiglossis which I germinated in February.The biggest look like a flower stem is forming.Should I pinch these back too.I cant set them out for another couple of weeks.
Thanks

I buy a nice flat of blooming impatiens, leave a few blooms and pinch the rest back low. They look horrid but they sprout many side stems and I have a bush instead of a stick. For the baby plants since I don't have fingernails, I use a small pair of shears to get down in and take off that nice fluffy middle so that only the sides are left with the stem ending in the cut I made. I pinched the heck out of the pansies I bought and they are just starting to come back all nice and bushy.

We've all seen marigolds that are a stick with a flower on the end. Why settle for that when you can pinch and have a bushy plant with many blooms?

Just another two cents worth. You can pinch to your pocket book's advantage too. Last week I bought 9 4 inch pots of Salvia farinacea. They were tall and root bound. I brought them home, set them in the ground, breaking up roots, etc, and then came behind and pinched them back to the bottom set of leaves on each stem. I stuck the pinchings (some divided into two) into four inch pots of soilless mix. So far, all are alive, and if they do like others in years before, they'll be ready to set out in two or three weeks. Oh, I got 36 new plants off the nine I bought, for a totale of 45 plants for $20. Pretty tidy savings, I think.

Wow! I'm glad I found this forum. I'm just confused as to where to pinch exactly. I've got a variety of flowers planted in my beds right now, I always dead head my petunias. I've heard I can do the same with geraniums but this is the first year I've ever planted those. (Not my favorite, but wanted a splash of red) If someone could just clarify for me exactly where to pinch, lets say for impatiens and snapdragons right now, I'd really appreciate it.