What you need to know about pinching back plants

It may at first seem counterintuitive, but pinching back the blooms or branches on fruit and flowers can help the plant increase its yield. Here's what you need to know about the fruitful practice.

When the tip of a stem or branch is cut off, the plant releases hormones that energize the next buds on the stem, causing new branches to grow.

• Pinching makes use of this natural growth pattern by removing the terminal, or dominant, bud or growing tip.

Blackberries and raspberries will produce more fruit if you pinch back the tips of new stems when they're about 1.5 metres  long.

• Small lateral branches will then develop, which will bloom and bear fruit the following summer.

For big blooms on dahlias and chrysanthemums, pinch out the side shoots to train the plant to have a single upright stem.

• When buds appear, remove the lateral ones on the main cluster, leaving only the central bud.

For bushy dahlias and chrysanthemums with more, smaller blossoms, take the opposite approach.

• Start pinching out the main stem tips when the plants are 20 centimetres tall and continue until mid-July, just before the buds begin to form.

On rose standards, keep the trunk tidy and direct the energy to the topgrowth by pinching or cutting out little buds that form along the stem.

• Pinch back excess flowers on fruits and vegetables for beautiful produce that's bigger and more plentiful.

Eggplants and peppers often sprout many flowers that if left alone will make many small fruits.

• Pinch to eliminate aphids.

These small sucking insects cluster on tender new growth and are common on beans, roses, sweet peas and many other flowers. Simply pinching off infested stem tips gets rid of hundreds of aphids while stimulating growth of new lateral branches.

Variegated plants, with leaves marked in white, pink or yellow, sometimes send out a stray branch with leaves of solid green.

• Pinch or cut these back to the main stem; otherwise, the entire plant may revert to green.