How to Deadhead Canna Lilies in 5 Simple Steps

1. Assess Plant for Faded Flowers

   Check your canna lilies every few days for spent blooms. When the flowers are past their best, they will wilt and lose their vibrant color. Healthy blooms typically last a few weeks before they begin to fade.
   

2. Remove Faded Flowers Individually

   Canna lilies produce multiple bloom spikes on a single stem. You can carefully remove single faded flower spikes using sterile, sharp pruning shears to snip them off. Do this just above where they join the main stem, leaving the other spikes to continue to bloom.

3. Remove a Full Flower Stem

   Once most of the flower spikes on the individual stem have faded, you'll want to cut the full spiking section of the stem back to keep a tidy appearance and help encourage new blooms without the plant becoming leggy. Do this just above any new foliage growth, and avoid cutting off any forming budding spikes.
   

4. Cut Back Damaged Stems

   If any full stems are damaged or unhealthy-looking, cutting them back close to the ground is best. This directs energy to the root system to promote healthy growth the following year.

5. Dispose of the Spent Blooms and Stems Properly

   You can gather the lopped-off flowers and stems in a bucket to add to your compost pile, chop them down to sprinkle as a nutrient-rich mulch, or pop them in your garden waste bin. If the plant suffers from disease, put the cuttings in a sealed plastic bag and pop them in your general waste.

Why You Should Deadhead Canna Lilies

There are various reasons it's worth considering taking a few minutes out of your day to deadhead your canna lilies.

• Aesthetics: The most obvious reason is that the large blooms don't look good in your flower beds when they shrivel and lose their color. Your landscape will look neater and more attractive only featuring blooms at their best.
• Redirect energy: Allow your plants to focus all their energy on growing healthy roots, foliage, and new buds, rather than using reserves on withered blooms.
• Extend the bloom season: Cannas produce more than one set of blooms. Removing fading flowers prevents your plant from thinking it's time to go to seed, and they may produce blooms for longer.

Deadheading is often also done to prevent plants that can take over your yard from self-sowing. Canna lilies don't tend to be aggressive self-sowers, and many hybrid cultivars are sterile, so this isn't usually an issue.

How to Keep Your Canna Lilies Blooming

To see those flowers flourish, offer your canna lilies warm weather, full sun, and rich, evenly moist soil. Fertilizing in the spring and dividing your plants when they get crowded also helps promote profuse, healthy blooming.

Additional Tips

When deadheading your canna lilies, keep the following in mind:

• Don't cut back the foliage: Unless the plant is damaged or diseased, don't cut back the entire stem until the end of the growing season. The foliage on canna lilies adds extra color and textural interest to your landscape.
  
• Cut back at the end of the growing season: Cut back these perennials in the fall once all blooming has finished and the foliage is fading. Snip them down to around 6 inches off the ground. This helps prevent rot and disease from developing when the colder, wetter weather hits, rejuvenates the plant, and keeps your landscape looking tidy.
• Scissors rather than shears: If you don't have small pruning shears, a sharp, sterile pair of scissors will do the job for deadheading.
• Don't pinch with fingers: Canna lilies have thick, squishy flower spikes. Trying to pinch off flowers with your fingers could result in you accidentally pulling off or damaging the nearby blooms.
• Cannas aren't true lilies: If you have true lilies in your garden, these will have different deadheading requirements.