Every morning, I take a stroll around my newly planted garden areas. The seedlings are coming up and the dahlias have broken ground. It’s so exciting to see all the new growth. While my plants are growing slowly, all around them is a massive amount of very determined plants that have sprung up. Some of these plants are weeds and some are overachievers in the garden.

What is an overachiever in your garden? Flowers and herbs that reseed themselves so prolifically they’re difficult to combat once they begin to grow. Ask me how I know!

Some of your garden flowers are experts at making seeds. Lots of seeds. If you forgot to deadhead those plants last garden season, then they left behind hundreds, if not thousands, of seeds in the soil. Seeds that will germinate and sprout with very little encouragement… just add water and sunshine.

Plants That Produce Large Amounts of Seeds…

Here are a few flowers and herbs that produce massive amounts of seeds. Some are perennials and some are annuals. These plants are wonderful self-seeders. But too much of a good thing can bring trouble to the garden.

• Allysum
• Bachelor Buttons
• Black-Eyed Susan
• Borage
• Calendula
• Cilantro
• Cosmos
• Feverfew
• Foxglove
• Hollyhock
• Lemon Balm
• Marigold
• Oregano
• Poppies
• Shasta Daisies
• Sweet William
• Violas
• Yarrow

These are lovely flowers and herbs to have in your garden. While some gardeners encourage you to stay clear of these plants, they are the mainstay of a cottage style garden and cutting garden. The trick is to control overachievers so they don’t control you and your garden.

5 Ways To Control Overachievers In The Garden…

Having plenty of flowers growing in your garden is a blessing. But when those flowers produce massive amounts of seeds, it’s important to control their distribution. If you don’t eliminate the abundant seed heads, your garden can quickly be overcome by new plants. You need to keep a tight rein on any overachievers you’re growing. Here are five options for keeping these plants under control.

Deadhead Your Overachieving Flowers

Make time in your garden schedule to deadhead these plants regularly. Just ten to fifteen minutes each day can make a big difference in how easily they can become a problem. You must be consistent with deadheading. Recognize which flowers are a problem and keep removing the spent flower heads before they go to seed.

When you do this job regularly, the amount of work is minimal. It can become overwhelming, however, when you wait until all the flowers are finished blooming. Then the task can seem insurmountable and the earliest blooms have likely dropped seeds already.

Another benefit of deadheading is that it encourages many of your plants to keep blooming all season long. And who doesn’t want more flowers?

To make deadheading easier, consider these tips:

• Carry clippers and a bucket whenever you’re making the garden rounds. It’s quick and easy to cut off the spent flower heads. Or wear a garden apron with a large pocket for holding the spent flowers.
• Each day, pick one type of flower or herb to work on. That way, you continually keep the dead flowers dealt with by rotating through the garden.
• To make this chore easier, buy yourself a good pair of garden pruners and keep them sharp.
• Find your favorite time of day to work in your garden. Maybe you enjoy the early morning hours. Or the quiet of the evening, with its last rays of sunshine, might be your best time.
• Bring some of your favorite music or an audio book to listen to while you’re trimming the flowers.

READ… How To Create A Beautiful Garden In 30 Minutes A Day

Plant Flowers Where They Can Grow Abundantly

If you don’t have time to deadhead regularly, then plant self-seeders where it’s perfectly okay for them to grow out of control. Choose an out-of-the-way area in your garden that doesn’t interfere with your cutting beds, herb beds or vegetable patch. That way, you can enjoy the abundance without having to deal with new seedlings.

Many years ago, I planted a hollyhock in my vegetable garden. Within the first year, it took over and competed for garden space. It has literally taken years to eliminate it from these beds. I recently found a spot at my cabin where it makes a nice country touch along the road. The hollyhocks can grow all they want and it will not be a problem in my vegetable beds.

Choose Your Plants Wisely

If your garden time is limited, then you might limit your overachieving plants to just one or two per season. And plant them so they won’t all bloom at the same time. That way, you won’t have as many flowers to deadhead at the same time.

Also consider the growing patterns of your plants. For example, Shasta Daisies have one main bloom time. While they do continue to produce a second flush of flowers, they mainly bloom in the late spring/early summer. Once they’re done blooming, you can go in and remove all the flower heads.

Cosmos, on the other hand, blooms continuously from mid-summer through autumn. That means you’ll need to regularly remove the spent flowers. So you might limit the number of cosmos you grow each year to help reduce the amount of time needed to deadhead.

Remove New Seedlings as Soon as They’ve Sprouted

When you realize seedlings are sprouting out of control, don’t wait to deal with them. It’s a lot easier to remove hundreds of seedlings when they’re tiny than when they become full-sized plants. You can easily run a hula hoe through the dirt or use a hand-held garden rake to dislodge the small seedlings. Believe me, a few minutes spent early on will save you hours of work later.

It helps to know what the seedlings look like, so spend some time learning how to recognize these little overachievers at an early stage. You can find a variety of seedling images for flowers, wildflowers and even some vegetables on this site: The Seed Site.

Consider Using a Barrier to Cover the Ground

If you just don’t have time to do the work of removing spent flowers, then consider covering your garden beds with ground cloth. This won’t work in all your garden beds, but it can work in your flower borders and even your vegetable beds. To do this, determine where you’ll plant your flowers, then cover the remaining area with ground cloth. To make your flower beds look more attractive, cover the ground cloth with some type of mulch. Using a ground cover can work well with perennial flowers such as Shasta Daisies.

There are a couple of concerns with using ground cloth. First, be sure you’re using water permeable fabric so that your plants can get adequate moisture. Second, using ground cover is not a good choice if you want your plants to reseed. We use it in some vegetable beds to help eliminate weeds, but not in the cutting garden where I want the annual flowers to reseed themselves each year.

If you love the look of an overgrown cottage garden, then you’ll want plenty of these self-seeders growing. Allowing some flowers to reseed themselves is a great way to get flowers for next season. So let some of the flower heads drop their seeds for controlled beauty. But remember, too much of a good thing can make a lot of extra work for you.

The key to preventing an overabundance of these self-seeders in your garden is to stay on top of the dead-heading process. As you stroll through your garden each day, enjoy the new plants that are growing, but pay attention to the overachievers. Remove the excess before they grow out of control. That means you need to be consistently working in your garden. But what a wonderful way to spend time each day.