Flowering Jasmine Plant : Deadheading and Side Expansion - 8 May 2024

I was trying to find ideas online on how to deal with dried scented jasmine flowers. I wrote about this plant here; currently the plant is on a windowsill and I have a feeling it’s not a good place for it because the flowers are looking rather dry - or perhaps it is just natural.

As usual I went online to try and find answers. This old article for example makes reference to a plant outside a house, but I guess that it's only a matter of scale and I can still just cut the dead flowers off to encourage new growth :

Prune vigorous shoots back to a pair of buds to stimulate side shoots. Remove anything dead, dying, diseased, crossing or very weak. If you need to fill in empty spaces across the framework, prune side shoots back to a pair of buds and you’ll stimulate more side shoots.

This You Tube video tells you all sorts of interesting uses of dried flowers for mainly magic love ‘spells’ : I’m truly unlikely to try all of that but it was a bit of fun to watch that very short video.

I also read that you can use the dried flowers to give scent to soap and candles, and for sachets. Sadly they did not explain how to make the sachets but I suspect it is a similar process to the sachets made with lavender flowers. I’m keen to try that just to see if it works.

I also never really knew that Amazon sells bags of dried jasmine flowers, so there's a business aspect to this which I hadn't considered. I’m not really planning to start a business but I find it interesting and also wonder whether or not all varieties are suitable for that. When I looked at the ‘dried flowers’ available online they actually look as if they weren’t allowed to open, as if what’s dry is what I’d call the bud - perhaps I'm wrong but I suspect that once the flower opens and dries the nice scent is gone.

This is a topic I'll be learning more about; for instance, can I use this variety to make jasmine tea, how long do the dried flowers keep in storage and so on.

Another issue I need to investigate is the plant’s side expansion :

The photo above shows you the current state of the plant. You can clearly the dried flowers needing deadheading and some that are still okay. You can also see that long side ‘shoot’ that is wanting to trail. I wonder whether this plant needs to go outside to be trailed on a hedge or wall, but I’m not really sure if it would survive the winter here.

Anyhow, it's all a learning process. Thank you for reading !