pinching back small plants?

I started tall ageratum a little too early and it is getting -- well, tall. Admittedly, many of my plants are a bit leggy, too -- beginner mistakes! I can't plant the ageratum outside for another month or so. Can I pinch them back in the meantime?

Peckhaus, sure you can, you'll get a much bushier plant out of it. I've been using small scissors dipped in alcohol. I had some disease issues when I was just pinching with my dirty fingers. it's been cold here so I have plants that are on hold also. lol, Jim

Thanks! Good idea about sterlizing the scissors. I suppose I can pinch back all the flowering plants while I wait for the weather to warm up?

My tomatoes are getting tall, too. My 2-inch transplant pots weren't deep enough to sink the stems all the way, but I did my best. I'll bury the rest when I plant them in the ground.

Do you have any way to get the plants some more light? That should also help with the legginess.

ecrane,

I'm not sure if I can get the plants more light. Since transplanting, they've been 1-3 inches under shop lights. I think the problem was when they germinated at different paces in the same tray. I didn't know when to take off the dome and when to tranplant with the various growth speeds. Also need to find some deep tranplant pots so I can sink the stems. I'm still learning...

Thanks for the help.

Maybe light's not the problem then, 1-3" under the lights sounds like the right distance.

Uh oh...I've got my lights about 1/2 above my plants...too close? They're not leggy and have a nice thick stem...so I figured I was doing ok.

Peckhause you also have an added bonus when pinching those plants back. Many pinched cuttings can be re-rooted. You can end up with a few extra babies as well as a bushier mother plant. I have some wave petunia cuttings sitting in water that are blooming and rooting at the same time.

La

What about geraniums(pelargoniums)?

Mine were big enough that I had them acclimated to outdoors a couple weeks ago, when it was so spring-like.

when the weather turned so bad, I had to put them in a west window since my plant shelves(with adjustable flourescents) were full again with new, tiny seedlings.

They have gotten extremely leggy and lost a lot of their lower leaves since bringing back indoors. Now, I'm stumped. Should I pitch them? waaaaaahh. Or, is their another alternative?

somebody, please help me?
Sasha

You can pinch off the tops (root them for more plants!), or you can bury the naked lower stems when you put them into larger pots...

Even if the lower leaves have dropped off, you may see tiny points of green where the base of the leaf stem was -- those are new little branches just waiting to emerge if you cut off the stem just above that point.

If you're not sure about cutting back, I sometimes hedge my bet with a multi-stemmed plant by pruning back most of the stems hard but leaving one leafy/leggy stem -- just to make sure the plant has some leaves while it's trying to put out new growth.

I have some cosmos seedlings that I am not sure to pinch or not to pinch????.....on annuals. should I pinch after the second set of real leaves?