Fall is Mum Time

Fall is in the air and anyone who is anybody is planting mums.

The chrysanthemum, or in this case the hardy garden mum, brings a quick splash of color to our gardens when all the other flowers in our gardens are waning. At a time when your roses are getting ready for a long winter’s nap, the garden mum is ready to brighten your garden and lift your spirits. The hardy garden mum comes in a multitude of colors that can literally bring the rainbow into your flower beds.

When I worked at Barthel’s Garden Center, where I was employed as a nursery technician, I was amazed by the number of customers who would come in and say that they wanted to get their yearly mums for their gardens. Invariably most customers would say that their mums didn’t make it through the winter and they wanted new ones to bring color and cheer to their gardens. This doesn’t have to be the case; with minimal care you can keep those beautiful mums coming back for many years to come. And I do mean minimal care. Even if you don’t have a green thumb, if you follow a few simple steps you will amaze your friends and neighbors with the bounty of beautiful mums that keep coming back year after year.

The first step is to purchase healthy plants from your local garden center. At this time of the year mums are for sale everywhere. The local drug store, the grocery store, roadside produce stands and flea markets, to name a few. The problem is, the mums you see at places such as the drug store receive minimal care by store employees who know absolutely nothing about the proper care of bedding plants. Just yesterday I stopped at a local drug store that I shall not name and by the entrance they had a large display of six-inch pots of mums that looked like they were on their last legs. Had these mums been in my care while I worked at Barthel’s, I would most likely have been sent packing. Those mums were so pitiful that they should have been put into the Dumpster. The price on these sad sacks was two for $9.

Unfortunately most people think that flowers at a local garden center are going to be much more expensive, but that is not the case. Compare the beautiful, extremely large plants in eight-inch pots in the above picture. Those beauties were four for $18 at Barthel’s Garden Center. During my storied past I have been an Ohio Certified Nursery Technician and a dedicated amateur botanist and I can tell you that buying healthy and beautiful plants at your local garden center not only pays dividends in the long run, but most of the time is no more expensive than the big box stores that try to flim-flam into thinking they have educated, dedicated personnel who’s only purpose in life is to sell you the best plants available. That just isn’t the case!

The next step in caring for your mums is the easiest — just plant them and enjoy. The only tip I might give you for planting is to examine the roots. Quite often the roots on those massive plants such as the ones I purchased can be crowded in the pot. Just take a knife or your pruning shears and nick the roots a little. This will help promote the growth of feeder roots which will help the plants get established before winter rears its ugly head. Do not give the plants any fertilizer at all. This will only promote weak growth at a time when the plants will not be able to sustain that growth. A little bone meal in the bottom of the planting hole is the only thing you should give the plants other than a healthy drink of water when planting.

After planting, sit back and enjoy your mums until winter comes. Once the first frosts bring an unwanted end to the colorful flowers on your plants comes the next step in insuring that you have mums from your own garden next year. That step is, don’t instinctively cut down your mums. Using my technique of keeping your mums from year to year is to leave the stems on the plants. What you need to do is wait for a period where you get two or three days when the temperatures stay below freezing constantly. Then you can cut off the flower heads leaving the now brown stems. The next step is to mulch the plants with six to eight inches of mulch or dead leaves that you have raked up from your yard; you can even mound dirt on top of the plants if you want. The idea here is to let the root balls of the plants freeze and then mulch them in order to keep the roots cold all winter. The main reason mums and certain other plants have difficulty making it through the winter is that the vagaries of winters in our area don’t keep some plants constantly in dormancy throughout the winter. Mums are especially prone to wanting to start to grow when we have periods of warm weather in the middle of winter. Once we have a few days of warm weather mums will want to start growing again and if any amount of new growth takes place it will be quickly killed off when the freeze comes back. If you mulch your mums correctly the roots will be kept cold during that January thaw and stay asleep as they should.

When warm weather does come along in the spring you can remove the mulch once the ground has warmed and you see signs of new growth at the base of the mum plants. Now that spring is here and new growth on your mums is quite evident it is time to cut off the old growth. Cut the brown stems down to a nubbin and let the plants develop an inch or two of new growth. Next we are going to use the division technique I wrote about in my last blog about . I like to lift the entire root ball, shake off the dirt and then divide the plant. Mums spread by sending out stolen and you can actually see what can be new viable mum plants by looking closely at the roots. After dividing the plants, place your new plants 24 inches apart because what I am going to have you do next is the same practice that is used in your local garden center. The way they get those huge, beautiful, round mum plants is by pinching the plant stems at regular intervals. The method I use is to pinch the stems after every second leaf of new growth. I usually do this until somewhere around Aug. 7-14. This may be a little late to make the last pinch of your mums. Most commercial growers make the last pinch of their mum plants on Aug. 1. This ensures showy blooms during fall’s peak color time. I like to do it a little later because I like to try and keep blooms on my mums until Halloween. I know it is a little risky because we quite often get a killing frost before Halloween. But, I stay prepared with plenty of newspapers to cover my mums to protect them. Otherwise, give your mums a little fertilizer on the first of every month until July 1. As I said before any fertilizer at a late date just promotes weak growth that most likely can’t be sustained.

If you follow these few simple steps you can have beautiful mums that keep coming back year after year. Who knows, you may even wind up with enough to set up your own roadside stand next fall.