Featured Plant: Mums
Poll: Are Mums Disposable Plants?
Mums have taken over the gardens. It is amazing the way they suddenly start popping up here and there, until finally every house you pass has its blanket of burgundy, yellow and orange at the front entrance. Mums must be very easy to force, because you don’t see other fall flowers lining the nursery shelves come fall, all set to bloom. It’s nice that the nurseries did all the pinching and growing for us, while we were busy with our summer blooming plants.
We’re probably spoiled. Fall blooming flowers take a great deal of patience, not to mention a great deal of room for the many months they do nothing more than sit there waiting their turn. So it is nice to be able to freshen up your garden with very little effort on your own part. Half the time gardeners don’t even take the plants out of the pots.
Mums have become disposable plants and that’s actually too bad because they’re pretty easy to grow and there’s greater variety if you grow your own. That’s right, there’s more to mums than those fall-toned pom-poms. So take a peek at how easy it is to grow truly hardy mums and then take the poll below and tell us if you buy disposable mums every year.
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Photo Courtesy of lauren stout / stock.xchng
Comments
Mums are great perennials. They’re easy to divide. The trick in moderate climates is to keep them pinched back through the spring to late summer and then let them flower. A few can be persuaded to flower throughout the spring and summer. It’s just a matter of experimenting. I keep my mums in containers until I’m sure they will look good and then they go “on display”. When they go off, they’re up rooted and go back into pots for recovery.
This is my first year with mums. So far I haven’t had much luck. I got mine on clearance (and half dead) from Lowes. They are in pots and have the little buds like they want to bloom but they don’t. Maybe they will later in the year. I plan to keep them in the pots and hang onto them until next year and still if they still have some life!
I bought four mums last year but it was in the spring. I planted them in a five foot long container near the front porch.
The mums bloomed in June. Luckily I have a neighbor who has been growing mums for years. She did not believe the mums bloomed; she thought I had purchased a different plant. When she looked at the mums, she said she had never seen mums bloom at that time of year. When the mums were finished blooming I deadheaded them to the first set of leaves below the flower and they bloomed again in the fall. I deadheaded them again. They did not bloom in the spring this year, but let me tell you, the five foot container is not even close to what they need. They are huge and beautiful (red and yellow).