How do I pinch out plants to make them bushier?

A growing tip releases hormones that suppress the buds below it, which is why an unpinched plant tends to be one tall stem with a flower on top. Remove the tip and that suppression goes: the dormant buds in the leaf joints break and the plant branches. It is the cheapest and most effective technique in ornamental gardening and it takes seconds per plant.

Step by step

1. Wait until the plant has three or four pairs of leaves.Pinching earlier than that leaves too little plant to branch from. Later works too but you sacrifice more growth.
2. Find the soft growing tip and take it out just above a leaf pair.Use finger and thumb — a clean pinch on soft growth is better than secateurs, which crush. Cut or pinch immediately above the leaves, leaving no stub.
3. Look for the buds you are releasing.In the angle between each leaf and the stem sits a small bud or shoot. Those are what grow away once the tip has gone. If you can see two shoots in the joint below your pinch, you have pinched in the right place.
4. Pinch bedding plants and annuals as you plant them.Petunias, antirrhinums, cosmos, nicotiana, marigolds, zinnias and most trailing bedding all respond well. A pinched bedding plant is visibly fuller within three weeks.
5. Pinch dahlias, sweet peas and chrysanthemums.All three produce many more flowering stems for a single pinch. Dahlias at three or four leaf pairs; sweet peas at the same stage; chrysanthemums pinched once in late spring and sometimes again a few weeks later.
6. Pinch basil, mint and other soft herbs regularly.Not once but repeatedly through the season, which is really just harvesting done in the right place. It keeps them bushy and delays flowering.
7. Pinch fuchsias and pelargoniums for shape.Both branch readily and become straggly if left. Pinch young plants once or twice in spring for a much better shape all summer.
8. Do not pinch plants that make a single flower spike.Delphiniums, foxgloves, lupins, hollyhocks, lilies, gladioli, sunflowers grown for one big head, and most bulbs. The tip is the flower. Pinching it removes the display.
9. Do not pinch after flower buds have formed.By then the plant has committed. Pinching at that stage removes flowers and delays the display without producing much branching.
10. Expect flowering a week or two later.Pinching delays the first flower slightly and produces far more of them over a longer season. It is a trade worth making almost every time.
11. Use the pinched-out tips.Basil tips go in the kitchen; fuchsia, pelargonium and coleus tips root easily as cuttings. Very little needs to be wasted.

Tips

• Stopping is the same technique under a different name, usually applied to chrysanthemums and dahlias where the timing is planned precisely for a show date.
• The Chelsea chop is the same principle applied to established perennials in late May, cutting whole stems back rather than pinching soft tips.
• A plant that has already become leggy can often be cut back harder in early summer and will rebranch, though it flowers later.
• Plug plants and cheap bedding are frequently sold unpinched. Pinching them the day you get them home is the single best thing you can do for the display.

Common mistakes

• Pinching a delphinium, foxglove or lupin — The growing tip is the flower spike. Removing it removes the flower.
• Pinching too high, leaving a bare stub — The stub dies back and can rot into the stem. Pinch immediately above a leaf pair.
• Pinching once buds have set — You are removing flowers with no meaningful gain in branching. Pinch early, in the plant's leafy growth stage.
• Being too gentle with bedding plants — They are far tougher than they look and a single pinch transforms the shape. Half-hearted tip removal achieves nothing.

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