Spent

Spent Flowers - Dead or dying flowers.
Spindly Growth - Leggy, long, or flimsy new growth that has developed out of proportion to the rest of the plant.

SPENT - Bulbs and flowers of a plant that have finished blooming. It's time to deadhead them.
SPHAGNUM MOSS - Many mosses native to bogs are sphagnum. Used for the lining of hanging baskets and for air layering (i.e. Spanish moss.) ...

Remove spent flowers. Using scissors or hand pruners, snip off flower stems just above a leaf or bud when they finish blooming to prevent them from forming seeds. Pick off damaged leaves.

Spent annuals from the garden, hanging baskets and containers
Brown waste:
Shredded paper, newspapers and un-coated cardboard.

SPENT: Bulbs and flowers of a plant that have finished blooming.
SPHAGNUM MOSS: A bog moss which is collected and composted. Most peat moss is composed primarily of sphagnum moss.
SPICES: Seeds, fruits, or roots used to flavor cooking.

I spent my teenage years living in Porlock, within the Exmoor National Park. The land and seascape there had a huge influence on me though I probably wasn't fully aware of it at the time.

I spent the summer of 2004 counting plants in Kreischer Hill, the historical name for a 100-plus-acre tract of land on the south shore of Staten Island.

I spent Saturday doing hardcore gardening work including prepping the fire-escape windowboxes for planting. On Sunday afternoon I purchased a few plants for the boxes and decided to get them planted up rather than wait for additional plants.

We spent Sunday afternoon pressing apples. This is about a quarter of the apples I pressed. First they have to be pulped by putting through this scratter. Then the pulp has to be pressed in a press. The final result is 26 litres or 40 imperial pint...

...spent enjoying your blooming beauties. With small gardens, pruning and watering will also be. More
Landscaping Ideas for Small Front Yards
Small spaces can pack a big punch. Because you have a limited amount of. More ...

I've spent years developing a garden filled with flowers, herbs, shrubs and trees. I've also put a lot of effort into making my garden a place where my grandchildren could play safely and learn about growing gardens of their own.

-- A spent flower, hence, a verb referring to pinching off of flowerheads to prevent seed formation.
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Allow spent foliage to remain for the winter. Spent blooms are ornamental in fall and winter. Cut back to the ground in the spring.
Astilbes are heavy feeders and respond well to high-nitrogen fertilizer in fall.
Needs well-drained soil overwinter.

You've spent hours pampering your gardens, and now it is time to protect plants from the effects of cooler weather. In fact, most of the work for next spring's yard and garden starts in the fall with clean-up.

You've spent good money on your shrubs - don't throw it all away with improper planting techniques.

Remove spent blooms to keep the plants looking attractive.
Insect and Disease:
African daisies are seldom bothered by insects or disease. Plant disease can occur in wet, humid weather. Treat with insecticides and fungicide only if needed.

Remove spent blooms to promote additional blooms and extend the blooming period. This will also keep the appearance neat and beautiful. Also see deadheading blooms.

Remove spent plants from the vegetable garden and add them to the compost pile. Discard diseased plants in the trash. Turn over the soil with a garden fork (or till) to expose underground pests to cold temperatures.

Pull up spent vines and foliage of annual flowers and compost them or dig them into the garden. If the plants are diseased, however, discard them in the trash.
Weeds ...

"I have spent countless hours pulling ivy up from the roots & removing it from the brick on the side of my house. The root system is UNBELIEVABLE! ...

Removing spent flowers is referred to as "deadheading." Deadheading lengthens the bloom time of a perennial, prevents seeding, and enhances the appearance of the plant. Here is a bearded iris with several spent flowers.
Click picture to enlarge ...

Removing spent flowers and cutting back foliage is the only routine maintenance most perennials require. For example, cutting faded flowers dramatically prolongs the flowering season of daisies and salvias.

Pick off spent flowers to encourage continued flowering. If you see the small, pear-shaped, sap-sucking insects known as aphids clustered on the leaf undersides of new growth, knock them off the plant with a forceful spray of water.

- Remove spent flowers to keep the plants producing new blooms.
- Centaureas will self-seed, but not reliably and not for more than a year or two. It is best to start annuals with fresh seed every year.
Cut-Flower Bonanza ...

Removing spent blooms stops the formation of seed pods and energy to be diverted to the plant instead. However, the seed pods of Siberian iris are attractive and on established plants can be left for added fall and winter interest.

"I've spent most of my life on the island, and it's changed a lot. But on the other hand, it hasn't changed very much at all," says Mark Snider, who owns Winnetu Ocean­side Resort with his wife, Gwenn.

More time spent outdoors in the garden could be encouraged if shade was created using suitable trees, and combined with more extensive area of water makes a garden so much more enjoyable and relaxing.
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Ella and I spent three years in England. However, we always came home for the late fall and winter months. Joe "minded the store" while I was away and reported the progress of our project faithfully.

Remove any spent blooms or seed stalks. Especially if you will be digging or dividing the grass, you want the plant to focus its initial energy on roots rather than leaves, flowers, or seeds.
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Wait for new, green growth.

Deadhead spent flowers for continuous bloom and to prevent them from self-seeding. If you want Cosmos to self-seed next year; allow some of the seed heads to remain on the plant at the end of the season.

Cut back spent perennials that create hiding places for slugs, snails, and other pests. Prevent problem seeds from spreading.
Leave dried flowers, ornamental grasses, and seed heads that look good and provide food for birds.

As you remove spent crops from the vegetable garden, use a garden fork to loosen the soil, and mix in a 3" to 4" layer of compost.

Anyone who has spent time learning how to maintain a lush, green lawn knows that sprinklers are all but essential to the process.

spent flowers - Dead or dying flowers.
sphagnum - A bog moss which is collected and composted. Most peat moss is composed primarily of sphagnum moss.
spore - The reproductive cell of ferns, fungi and mosses.

Promptly remove spent flowers from any plant unless your intent is to harvest the seeds. It consumes the plants energy to produce the seeds, and in many species of plants (especially annuals), removing the dead flowers will promote further blooms.

An entire evening spent listening to sappy, over-wrong tales of love and devotion-doesn't sound like a love connection to us.

You can leave the spent flowers and enjoy the seed heads. The pods are attractive and jingle in the wind. However they can make the plants top heavy and prone to splitting open in the center, especially plants grown in partial shade.

Regular removal of spent flowers encourages a longer flowering season. Cut back stems of early flowering plants and deadhead them unless seed is required; this also prevents windrock damage.

The act of removing spent flowers either with a sharp instrument or by pinching-off
Diploid
A plant with the normal amount of chromosomes.

You can increase the flowering quantity and frequency by removing spent flowers, or dead-heading. Dead-heading will also promote overall healthiness in your plant which will increase its strength as well.

When I was a young boy my dad gave me about 10 square feet of his 5 acres of prime Rhodesian garden, It was my very first exposure to that great big gardening bug, he spent hours with me showing me how to sow seeds, ...

Deadheading is a process where spent flowers are removed. There are several schools of thought about this. Some gardeners like the look of the dried blooms on their plants, and even consider it an extra form of winter protection for their flower buds.

Deadheading or the removal of the old spent blooms is not really needed with Knockout rose bushes to keep them blooming.

INVESTING IN TURF CARE: The Lawn Institute’s estimate of $25 billion spent on lawn care includes all forms of turfgrass management and maintenance, not just homelawns.

I apply the same rule to herbaceous perennials that die back to the ground that I do to spent annuals. During fall clean-up, I rid the garden of debris that might harbor overwintering insects and diseases.

With a bit of effort, you can coax some herbs that spent summer outdoors to keep growing all winter long.

Sir Albert Howard, a British agronomist, went to India in 1905 and spent almost 30 years experimenting with organic gardening and farming.

Wade in and yank out spent annuals, even if they look like they still have a little life in them.

Deadheading is the removal of spent flowers as soon as they begin to decline. Once an annual flower blooms and sets seed, it has completed its life-cycle. By deadheading, the plant is unable to set seed and thus continues to produce flowers.

Start your clean-up by removing weeds and spent annuals from your beds. For shrubs and trees, remove diseased leaves, but pruning is not recommended in the fall as it may stimulate new growth just as the harsh winter is bearing down.

They can be clipped, their spent blossoms removed, and new blossoms will form, making for long lasting color and texture in the garden. In addition, annuals are inexpensive to produce and obtain.

Many people make the same mistake when deadheading petunias, simply pulling off the spent flower petals. This is a simple mistake to make, since they come off so easily.

As reported in Seattle Times, consumers spent $37.9 billion on landscape, lawn, and tree-care services in 2003, up 30 percent from 2002, according to the American Nursery & Landscape Association.

Wood bark chipping, black polythene, spent mushroom compost, spent hops, seaweed, shoddy (from woolen mills), sawdust, wood shavings and gravel are all other substances which can be used as mulches.

Sometimes that's only ten minutes spent caring for houseplants, or sometimes it's a couple of hours digging and working outside.

You probably already deadhead at least to get rid of spent flowers. But there are other reasons, too: My favorite is that you can prolong the bloom time or even get a second flowering out of many plants.

Spring: When soil temperatures reach 50ºF the grubs that spent the winter deep in the soil of our turf grass begin to make their way up into the root-zone and resume feeding for about 3-5 weeks, ...

Deadheading 101 -- Deadhead spent flower heads on spring-blooming bulbs to direct their energy back to their roots so they can build vigor for next year. However, if the bulbs were pre-chilled, don't bother.

deadhead To remove individual, spent flowers from a plant for the purpose of preventing senescence (going dormant) and prolonging blooming. For effective results, the ovary behind the flower must be removed as well.

2. Keep the garden clean. Composting or discarding spent plants and tilling the soil (especially in fall) can help you avoid trouble, since a number of insects and diseases overwinter or spend some stage of their lives on plant debris.

See also: Plant, Flower, Water, Spring, Soil