How to Keep a Snapdragon Garden

Snapdragons come in so many different colors, heights and fragrances. It is hard when the cooler weather comes to think of the beautiful little flowers dying. If you want to have the same flowers come back again the next spring, then there are a few things you can do. Do not be too hasty to trim them back when the frost starts hitting your yard. Wait and see if they make it, as many times snapdragons can tolerate a few frosts.

Instructions

1. Keep your flowerbed well fertilized. Snapdragons like a hearty root mulch that is mostly decomposed or compost. If weeds spring up, pull them out and let your snapdragons get all the light they can. They can tolerate some shade, but the point here is to keep the garden strong for the snapdragons.

2. Allow the flowers to fade on the branch and then carefully clip them off when the brown seedpods have formed or place a small paper bag over the branch and tie it off with a rubber band. After a few days, cut the whole branch off and let the seeds fall to the bottom of the bag.

3. Let some of the seeds fall off the plant and into the soil. Snapdragons are good about self-seeding themselves so if you let some go, you will probably get seedlings in the spring.

4. Plant the collected seeds about 8 weeks before the last frost of the spring, or around early March. The seeds are tiny, so sprinkle them in planting trays with good vermiculite just about a quarter of an inch deep. Keep them watered and in about 3 weeks, you will see little leaves sprouting.

5. Transplant the seedlings you have planted into your snapdragon garden plot once the ground has warmed and the danger of frost has passed. You should see some other seedlings just starting to come up from the seeds that self-seeded themselves. Within a few weeks, you should have some healthy looking plants that should start popping out some flowers. If you pinch the growing tips, the flowers will have shorter spikes, but there will be more of them, making the plant look bushier.