A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Plants and Flowers Forum COSMOS

Do cosmos benefit a lot from dead heading? I'd like to save some seeds but not at the expense of losing lots of blooms.

i think that depends on witch kind ya planted, i never done it except with sensation cosmos, and brightlights cosmos ive gotten more blooms with them.
http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/flowers/cosmos/cosmos.html
scroll all the way down to the pic of teta v red cosmo, and read that bit , it says you can cut back spring planted cosmos for more blooms.


this site says deadhead regulary for more blooms
http://www.theflowerexpert.com/content/aboutflowers/tropicalflowers/cosmos-pink


notice on both sites it says to water less, poor dry siol for best blooms! im gonna try not watering mine so much,

Cosmos profile

They are my all time FAV flower!!!!! As the flowers die I do go around and snip them off.

Loz, snip them off?? As in CUT the whole head off??

Do you save the heads and get seeds from them Loz?

I have some cute orangey-yellow ones that are short.I let them set then cut off seedhead,but the others I've been snipping.Its taller was a spring/fall fling item(and was suppose to be a marigold/calendula seed.)I've grown an orange one like my orangey-yellow& really loved it.I hated the ones I grew last year.I don't like the tall ones& when we get boiling hot down here...the tall ones look crappy,while the shorter ones it don't effect.

choose a few stems for seeds,then keep the rest cut..thats what I do with my zinnias.