Okay, I am so stupid. I just don't get it. I've read to pinch back when plants are young for best results. Some say not to pinch back cleome and others say do. I wish I knew what i was doing. Are side shoots not branches, or are they considered stems, or are they both the same thing? I DO NOT want this beautiful cleome to have one or two long stalks. I want more than that. I just hate myself for having to ask yet another question. Here are the pictures (Cell phone pics so quality not good) Questions below pics. On the pic above (showing the lavender blooms) If I just left this as is, wouldn't I have just two stalks with blooms? If so, I don't want that. I want more stalks. Say I left it alone, when would more stalks eventually come? The pics are two different plants. Upon examining both have two main stalks as I call them. The third pic you just cant see it, as it is shorter than the other. My wife and I are both new to gardening and just don't get it. Please, I have read and read and read and still confused. We know we want more branches. I definitely do not want just one/two stalks with blooms on top. Is it best to do this now so I can start out early at getting the effect we want? Here is an example of what we would like: Is this one plant or two or three set close together? If one, then what did this person do to achieve so many branches?

I deadhead my Harlequin (a small, seed-grown decorative dahlia) whenever the blooms fade. Production of new blooms is constant, so it always has buds, fresh flowers, fading flowers, and things I really should dead-head and promise to get around to shortly. As far as I've noted, my medium-sized semi-formal dahlia are the same, and I've never seen an exception on any dahlia type I've grown. Most seem to constantly produce buds. But I feed a lot. If you were--let's say--to remove every bud, it would probably be 2 to 3 weeks for the next set to develop.

I grow sunflowers which have smaller seeds. I toss the deadheaded flowers onto the ground for critters to eat the seeds. I toss them into an open space so that predators cannot sneak up on the birds. My bird feeders are bowls placed on open ground. Haven't had any trouble with cats disturbing the birds, even though a few strays have hung out here over the years. I put out food for stray cats, too. I often see birds eating the cat food. There aren't any squirrels where I live now. When I lived in California, I grew the type of sunflowers which you have in your photos. The squirrels often stole the seed heads, or broke big chunks out of them, and broke the flower stalks, too, because of their weight. I didn't mind because I had already enjoyed the flowers. The birds love those big sunflower seeds, too. Yes, you can eat the seeds, if you want. I prefer to buy sunflower seeds already hulled, because they are so messy to get out of their shells. The seeds can be eaten raw, or roasted and salted. When you trim your rose bushes, cut the canes into 5-6 inch lengths and put them in your flower pots. It will keep the squirrels out of your potted plants. They don't like thorns. I put cut up rose canes around the plants in my oak casks this year because a rabbit kept getting into the planters and eating the plants. It worked, he quit hopping up into those planters. Thorny blackberry canes work, too. Lorna

Good question, actually. Don't you just hate it when the answer is, "It depends."? I pinch off just the blossom on things like daffodils. I pull the florets off a hyacinth bloom so they don't set seed, but I leave the stem, as I read (don't know if it's true) that the green stem also makes chlorophyll as the leaves do. Lilies, you need to leave the whole stem with leaves to make food for next year's bloom. Just nip off faded blooms. On perennials and annuals, it also depends. Some stems I cut all the way back to the foliage, like the bare stem of a Gerbera daisy. On stokesia and zinnias, I cut back to just above the first joint, at which point a new stem will form and you'll get another bloom. If you're not sure, just nip off the bloom head and watch for a few days. Sometimes the bare stem will die back to the point where the plant would prefer that you cut. Spiderwort, the plant keeps adding more blooms daily but require no deadheading daily. When they finally slow down, midsummer, I cut the whole stalk back to the ground and the plant puts up a new stalk. I deadhead daylilies daily because I hate the look of yesterday's 'soggy socks' hanging off the stem with next day's bloom and buds. Roses, there used to be this iron-clad rule that you cut back to just above a 5-leaflet at a certain angle. Lately, some experts decided that deadheading just the bloom makes a faster rebloom. Some things, like melampodium, do not require deadheading, they drop seed and the old blossom just falls off. Nell