Specialty Gardening: growing flowers for a wedding!, 2 by warriorswisdomkathy

warriorswisdomkathy wrote:
Depending on the plant, yes about three to four weeks for new blooms. Some like the Zinnias could be less time and it will also begin branching which can be cut again to help increase. Also if needed you can pinch off flower buds to prolong time til bloom when necessary. you'll have to experiment. I've already been pinching my snapdragons I started from seed this winter and are all beginning to nicely branch. so when they go out to the garden I will have nicely branched plants. I've been pinching the tips of many of my seedlings already, Dianthus, Snaps, Monarda Lam Bada, Ammi, Salvias, Platycodons. In fact, I've clipped back my Dianthus atleast 3 times already.
Also you can control the size of blooms sometimes by what they call disbudding, like your Dahlias for instance. If you take out side buds with pinching, and let one on a branch develop, it will be a larger bloom..(can work on other plants also).

Pix are some that frequently multiply branching with pinching or deadheading. 1&3 Salvia nemerosa, white and purple
pix 2 is Dianthus X Loveliness (all 3 happen to be all season bloomers)

Since it's early in the season, do some pinching and see how long it takes for branching (every pinch should produece 2 more branches and so and so on... Salvia in pix1 is 1 plant, in pix 3 is 3-5 plants. The Dianthus is 1 plant.

Any plant that produces blooms at only one part of the season (ie Peonies, Iris (german) and some of the others ) will not produce branching. Altho disbudding side buds on peonies will produce a larger bloom but not more branching blooms (the flowers are set last fall).