Pinching Snapdragons

hey friends we're back in the high tunnel I haven't really gotten to talk much about the high tunnel so I keep promising to use it I'm going to so just very quickly the high tunnel structure that you see behind me above me is a way to extend this season if you want to do season extension a high tunnel is one of the most common things that people are setting up to do that basically what it allows you to do is extend your season you can plant stuff much much earlier than you typically would be able to plant things outside and then you can also grow things a lot longer into the year than what you would normally be able to grow for example it usually Frost's sometime in October and then all of our outside garden crops field crops things like that those things are all done they're dead you're not gonna harvest anything else in our high tunnels we're picking broccoli and lettuce and kale and a lot of other greens through December so that's one benefit of high tunnels that's why people our people use them some people heat their high tunnels with firewood or another source of heat you do not have to we don't heat our high tunnels with anything other than sunlight and I don't have to pay for that so this is a great way to grow a lot more crops in a year than you would be able to outside in addition to vegetable crops I also put a lot of my flowers for our cut flower business in the high tunnels it protects them from weather more so than if they were just outside I could control how much rain water they get cuz I'm watering with watering lines versus rain I can also control wind I can put the sides down on a day like today and every other day this spring that the wind has been blowing things to death outside so in here rather than having a very short hammered with rain and wind plant I have nice tall crops that are growing this crop here is a crop of snapdragons these are fancy snapdragons they're Madame Butterfly and Chantilly snapdragons they are a lot fancier than landscaping snapdragons people use them in bouquets and things but my job for today is to go through and clip the snapdragons basically what I'm doing to these plants is I'm cutting them in half why would I want to do that I just talked about getting them to grow and things are finally growing even under my frost blanket here so why do I want to cut them in half I'm gonna show you why there are a lot of flowers that we pinched it's actually called pinching and what it does is it allows you to get a lot more flowers off of one plant then you typically would if you did not pinch this plant you don't do this with vegetables if you pinch your vegetable you're going to not get anything from it but if you want to grow cut flowers and a lot of people are getting into that pinching is something that you can do with a lot of different types of flowers adjure a dime snapdragons some of the daisies dahlias you pinch celosia all of those things can be pinched to get tons more flowers than you typically would and even if you're just landscaping you can do the same thing so let me show you what we're doing I've got a good example right here because the weather has not been super cooperative and it's been cold I do have my plants growing at different rates in here so I've I don't just pinch on one day and I'm done I've had to do it a couple different times but I have a great example right in here of things that have been pinched versus not pinched this plant right here is a Snapdragon that has not been pinched and if we look at it I have one tall main stalk and then I have all these little side shoots coming off of that stock if I just leave this plant the way it is this one single stock is going to grow and it's going to get one tall flower and that's really it all of these side shoots they'll get a small flower but it's gonna be about four to six inches long and I can't do anything with that I can't arrange it in a bouquet I can't Bunch them and sell them that's kind of useless but what can do is get rid of this main stock basically this this guy right now is the leader he's the head honcho and if I just let him go it's gonna stay that way but if I take away this main stem that's going to encourage all these little side shoots to take off and grow basically you know who's gonna be the next leader they're all gonna grow really quickly and very tall you're going so you know if you're gonna pinch your crops you need to wait until there are at least three sets of leaves going up the stock don't pinch before that you're gonna take too much energy away from your plant and it's just going to just struggle to grow the rest of the season but once I've got three least three sets of leaves I've got one here one two three four or five I actually have five I'm gonna count up three and then I'm simply going to snip that off let it rot I can do the same thing here one two three come through I'm gonna take that off oh I just hack my flower in half it's okay because you're going to then get a plant that looks like this if I take a look at this plant see if I can find it I cut that flower right here now look at what my side shoots are doing they're all growing very rapidly and they're all getting tall on each of these so basically I just went from having one main flower - one two three four five six seven eight flowers that are all going to be tall and harvestable so I just increase the number of flowers dramatically and that also increases my profitability sorry I used a word that my family and I use and I didn't realize it anyway so that's a little bit about pinching and how it can be beneficial for your flowers whether you're growing for money or whether you're just landscaping my question for you today is kind of a college-level question but I want you to do some research I've given you some easy questions there are lots of hormones in a plant that control grow just like livestock just like in humans plants actually produce hormones as well we just don't think about it as much but if you have ever been to a greenhouse or a facility that grows plants they use a lot of growth hormones on plants either to get them to grow tall or to keep them short so what I want you to research today is the hormone in a plant that causes it to grow what is the hormone that makes a plant grow send me your answers

Channel: Ryan Zeisler

Views: 4,409

Rating: 4.875 out of 5

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Id: Vbc6YjvLsPM

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020