I don't deadhead my Great Blue Lobelia since I want to harvest seeds but your question made me wonder--does it need to be deadheaded? I do deadhead annuals through the season to promote continuous bloom but in my southern New England garden perennials normally bloom just once a season. My guess would be (and it's only a guess) is by removing the base of the flower you would be removing what forms a seedpod.

never in my life.. have i deadheaded a MG .. lol .. maybe thats why your post disappeared into the ether .. lol ..

nor lobelia.. for that matter ... lol .. mine free seeded.. certain winters .. usually not.. but i cant say i ever intended to collect seed ....

lynn!!!! .. its september.. time for deadheading is long gone ... everything is winding down ...

it doesnt matter where you are.. the days are getting shorter.. sunlight is in decline ... in the northern hemisphere.. even if you deadhead.. there may not be time for new buds to form.. and mature ... see link .. or listen to it ... back when music was music .. and lyrics.. lyrics ....

i suppose if you are in the deep south.. maybe there is time .. but if you are up north ... its almost time to yank the plant ...

so all thats left.. where are you ????

ken

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7810J78TmbU

wait.. are we talking annuals or perennials???

ken

It sounds like you are trying to remove each flower individually, is that correct? Leaving the 'base' of the flower is what makes me wonder. Deadheading usually involves cutting off the stalks or stem when a plant is finished blooming, not pinching off individual spent flowers and leaving a 'base'. That would be very very -----very tedious.

I'm in NYC. I thought 'deadheading' was removing individual spent flower blooms, yes. Otherwise, I'd call cutting off stalks or stems 'pruning'?

Great Blue Lobelia...isn't it by default a perennial?...typically I only buy perennials so I assume my GBL is just that.

Anyway, I just got it like 2 mos. ago, so didn't realize its flowering season is pretty much over.

Tx.

Cutting off spent flower stalks is not pruning. On a plant that forms blooms on stalks, deadheading means cutting off the stalks once they stop blooming for neater or a bushier plant or to avoid seeding which could encourage a plant to form new bloom stalks. The old stalks won't bloom again if you tediously pick off the individual flowers.

If its the type of plant with a flower on top of individual stems, you snip or pinch off the top portion each stem to remove dead flower but its not necessary to leave a 'base' part of the flower intact. On some plants, like coreopsis, you deadhead by cutting back the top portion of the plant to remove all the spent flowers and encourage a second cycle of blooms, its good to do that on many plants midseason for a second flush of blooms.

I cut down the center flower stem below the last blossom or seed head to keep GBL from self seeding so much. The plant will form more flower stems off the center stem and rebloom. This keeps my plants blooming until frost. I still call that deadheading.

I cut my Lobelias (both syphilitica and cardinalis) to the base after bloom.

I have a solution to the deadheading conundrum which also involves work but is infinitely more pleasurable to enage with - don't bother - get/grow more stuff. I too have worn myself to an utter frazzle deadheading - roses, sweet peas, cosmos, cornflowers - the list is endless...and worst of all, to miss just a couple seems to send that hormonal message ' game over'. Now, I deadhead nothing, ever. Once it is looking grimly, it gets ignored, shunted out of the way, tossed on the compost, sliced to the ground - anything, in fact, other than mince about plucking, snapping, pinching and faffing. Plenty other things to keep on going. 2 Months bloom counts as a fairly epic cycle - after all, I have a paeony which is gone in under a week..

And I am with Ken on this one - technically, my garden straggles on till almost Xmas...without me. I am back indoors, knitting, sowing (and sewing, my new craze)..and basically waiting for those hedge-shear moments when I can lash the lot down to the base and rake it into a compost heap...because I am gardened out, having been crazily involved for the last 8months.

I can pretty much sum up my gardening philosophy in a short sentence - when in doubt, do nothing apart from sow some more seeds.

When I had great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) I deadheaded it as mnwsgal described. I found that if I left the bloom stalk rather than deadheading, it seeded around way too much. TR2 gave a quite clear explanation of deadheading plants with clusters of flowers on stalks.

Yep, but not strictly true regarding flowering stalks and plants in spikes or racemes...as anyone who has (tediously) deadheaded campanulas flower by flower can attest (obviously been there). I dunno, don't wish to be disrespectful to committed deadheaders but I found that this single issue gave me more anxiety and grief than all other gardening worries put together (including thorny pruning problems). The sheer frantic horror to keep the sweet peas going just another few days...or cornflowers - I actually stopped growing many of these easy annuals because of the DHing nightmare.

The first plants to feel the neglectful regime of being left alone were roses...of which I grow A LOT (although most are species, once bloomers). And to my astonishment, it made not a single jot of difference - the hybrid musks and climbers rebloomed whether deadheaded or not...and at that point, I really started to slack off on the perennials...unless I could simply wave a hedge-trimmer on them (as with penstemons). I could have enjoyed it more if it was only a gentle snipping as with the dahlias but it just got all-consuming until it was either me or them. One nightmare year, I had swathes of cosmos, geum, malope, cornflowers, nasturtium, calendula and tagetes - thousands of flowers...along with it being a sweet pea year - I was almost insane by late August. It even overtook the hanging basket fiasco (when I had 13 of them). I do successional sowing and early yanking now.

I can see you panicing in the yard, Campanula :) Hee, like me and watering my pot forest of unplanted perennials.