Usually, flowers are a good sign in the garden, but when herbs start to flower, gardeners get worried. Generally, we grow herbs for their flavorful leaves, but most plants want to produce flowers and, eventually, seeds to reproduce themselves. Once they begin that process, producing foliage is no longer a priority — which is a problem if you want to harvest a plant’s leaves. Whether you’re focused on easy to grow herbs or the most difficult types of herbs to grow, you will likely run up against this problem. The good news is it’s an easy fix; all you have to do is snip off the flower buds.

There’s even more good news; if you regularly use your herb plants and harvest the leaves, you may be able to avoid flowering. Herbs won’t produce flowers until they have produced enough roots and foliage, so if you harvest regularly, they won’t get to the flowering stage. Still, not every herb in your garden will be as heavily used as others. However, it’s not the end of the world if you do see flowers. You can still save your herbs.

You walk out into the garden to check your plants only to find that your herb garden is starting to bloom. Perhaps you haven’t been using them very often, or they became stressed due to heat or lack of water, speeding up the flowering process. Whatever the reason, hope is not lost. Just grab yourself a pair of scissors or garden shears.

Frankly, this is not rocket science. All you have to do is snip off the flowers as soon as possible to sign to your plant that they should continue producing foliage. You may have to do this more than once throughout the season, so remember to keep an eye out. Herbs are the perfect type of plant to grow if you don’t have a green thumb. Many of them adapt easily to harsh conditions, and can stand up to plenty of trimming. Avoid harvesting the plant by more than 1/3 at a given time and your herbs should thrive. And familiarize yourself with the best ways to trim individual herbs, because they aren’t all the same.

Some gardeners think letting your herbs — or, at least, some of them — flower isn’t a bad thing. Whether you’ve done it by accident or intentionally, letting herbs like cilantro (Coriandrum sativum) and dill (Anethum graveolens) flower can have some benefits for your garden. For instance, letting your cilantro bolt has benefits, such as attracting pollinators and beneficial insects like parasitic wasps to the garden.

However, it’s also worth noting that herb plants are often used for more than just their leaves. The seeds of plants like cilantro and dill also have culinary uses. If you have a recipe that calls for coriander seeds, that’s just another way of saying cilantro seeds. In other words, sometimes the seeds of an herb are just as useful as their leaves. In this case, you may want to plant more than one plant so you can keep one trimmed for harvesting leaves while the other flowers and goes to seed.