Deadhead your Daffs!

 

Yup, it's that time again: the earliest Daffs are already over, although there are plenty more yet to come.

And already people are asking me about deadheading them, which always puzzles me, because I thought that "everyone knew" about this annual task. It would appear not, as once again, people are asking me about it! So here goes.

 

What do we mean by deadheading?

It means to remove the dead/dying/fading/finished blooms, before they set seed.

Why?

Because.....

 

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"Hand over your Lupins!"

 

Said the Highwayman.

Noble lord in carriage: "Lupins?"

Highwayman, impatiently: "Yes, yes, Lupins. Come on, hand them over."

Lady in carriage: "What, the flower Lupins?"

Highwayman (sarcastically) "Yes. The flower Lupins. Come on, hand 'em over."

Noble lord in carriage: "But we don't have any Lupins!"

Highwayman, with restraint: "I happen to know, that this is the Lupin Express."

Noble lord in carriage, pulling bunch of Lupins from under seat: "Damn!"

 Anyone under the age of about 40 won't have a clue what that means, and the rest of are now singing "Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, galloping through the sward, Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, with his horse Concorde," for the rest of the day.

Why this nostalgic glance back at a very old Monty Python sketch? Yesterday...

 

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Hydrangea: time to deadhead them.

 

Or is it??

It's late March as I write, and although we are having sunny days with a welcome increase in temperature, it's still perishingly cold overnight, with frost first thing.

So is it time to deadhead the Hydrangeas yet?

This is what they are commonly looking like, at this time of year:

 

The dead flowers from last year are starting to look tatty, some of them are snapping and dangling untidily, and the new leaves are sprouting.

So it's very tempting to prune off the dead material - but it's still very early in the year, so should we dead head them?

There are two answers to this question - yes, and no. Oh dear, not very helpful. I will try again.....

 

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Witches' Broom: on a Cherry Tree

 

I recently gave a course on Tree Identification in Winter, in Wiltshire, which was a lot of fun - well, it was for me, as I love teaching! The delegates seemed to enjoy it, too, and we had a lovely day without rain (very unusual for 2026 so far), rushing around the grounds of the site, identifying everything within sight. Or reach.

One particular Cherry tree made us pause, though: it was an ornamental Cherry, rather than a grown-for-fruit Cherry, and a lot of the branches had this weird malformation:

 

At a point fairly close to the end of the twig, there was a sudden burst of buds and short growths: very odd!

I immediately said "Witches' Broom" to myself, without really thinking, but I couldn't remember the details of what caused it: so, I took a couple of photos and made a note........

 

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