• Home
  • About
    • Privacy Policy
  • Blog
  • Prep-Ahead Meals Cookbooks
  • Recipes
  • Lifestyle
  • Gardening
  • Kid’s Activities
  • Gluten-Free Recipes
  • Budgeting Tips
↑

Premeditated Leftovers™

Prep-Ahead Meals, Cooking Tips, and Frugal Living

  • Cookbooks
    • Prep-Ahead Breakfasts and Lunches
    • Prep-Ahead Meals From Scratch
  • Recipe Index
  • Members Area
    • Member Login
    • Join Us
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Recipes
  • Gluten-Free Recipes
  • Lifestyle
  • Garden
  • DIY
  • Kids
  • Budget

You are here: Home / Gardening / How to Grow Chrysanthemums

How to Grow Chrysanthemums

August 17, 2014 by Alea Milham 13 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Read our disclosure policy here.
10612 shares
  • Share
  • Tweet

How to Grow Chrysanthemums as perennials. Enjoy the colorful flowers in your fall garden and use the foliage as a backdrop for other flowers the rest of the year.
How to Grow Chrysanthemums as perennials. Gardening tips and tricks for growing mums in your flower garden.

Chrysanthemums can be a lovely and frugal addition to your garden IF you don’t treat them like fall-blooming annuals! Mums are actually pretty hardy perennials. I was chatting with a friend about being saddened to see my neighbors discard their mums after they have stopped blooming for the season. We wondered why people did that. Yesterday, I was thumbing through a gardening book that I picked up at the library sale for a dollar and it recommended buying new mums each year. Seriously? What kind of gardening advice is that? Telling people to go buy new flowers does not teach them anything about growing plants!

How to Grow Chrysanthemums

Mums are quite inexpensive to buy and I do take advantage of sales on them like the coupon for Buy 2 mums/ Get 1 Free from the Home Depot Gardening Club. But I do not buy mums with the intention of discarding them when they are done blooming. I buy more mums because we have one acre that we are trying to landscape and it takes a lot of plants to fill up an acre!

How to Grow Chrysanthemums as Perennials

Mums are actually quite easy to grow. They grow best in sunny spots, with well drained soil. I mix compost into the soil, because that is how I justify keeping horses it does double duty, both nourishing the plant and helping to retain moisture near the roots. Although, Chrysanthemums do not like to sit in water, they do require a deep watering a couple of times a week.

Growing Chrysanthemums as perennials
Most of the mums you find in local garden centers have been bred to branch naturally, which makes them low maintenance. More branches = more blooms. so if you have a very leggy mum, you will want to move it to a sunny spot and prune it back to about 12 inches high. If you are going to prune or pinch back your mums, do so before July; you want to give the plant plenty of time to develop healthy buds.

Since mums do not bloom until late August or early September, I use them as a background plant in the spring and summer. I usually have a mix of spring and summer blooming bulbs and annuals in front of the mums. When they foliage of the summer blooming flowers dies back, I remove it and let the mums be the star of my fall garden.

Tips for growing Chrysanthemums as perennials

If you want your mums to survive the winter (and if you are still reading, I assume you do) pinch the dead flowers, but do not cut back the branches until spring. I also add a couple of inches of mulch to protect the roots.

Here is the really frugal part: Mums are easy to divide! In the spring (after the last frost and after you see new growth) dig up the entire plant. then using a clean knife or spade, cut pieces of new growth from the outer part of the plant making sure that you have roots as well. Plant immediately in a prepared bed. It is not necessary to divide mums each year; I only divide my mums every couple of years.

How to Grow Chrysanthemums as perennials

Do you treat your mums like annuals or do your appreciate them for the perennials that they are?

Fall Gardening Tips

7 Flowers to Grow in the Fall

How to Collect Flower Seeds

How to Collect Vegetable Seeds

How to Make Leaf Mold to Use in Organic Gardening

The Lazy Gardener’s Way to Prepare a Yard for Fall

How to Grow More in Your Square Foot Garden with Succession Gardening

10612 shares
  • Share
  • Tweet

About Alea Milham

Alea Milham is the owner of Premeditated Leftovers and the author of Prep-Ahead Meals from Scatch. She shares her tips for saving money and time while reducing waste in her home. Her favorite hobby, gardening, is a frugal source of organic produce for her recipes. She believes it is possible to live fully and eat well while spending less.

Comments

  1. Karin Mettgen says

    September 8, 2018 at 3:36 pm

    Twice I’ve tried planting mums before the winter. They are deeply set in the soil, prune them down a few inches, give them lots of water before the snow and cover them with some peatmoss. In the spring nothing comes out and wait until June and still nothing, so I remove them and throw them in the garbage. At the garden center I saw this year annual mums and the perrenial ones but afraid for another let-down. Any advice?

    Reply
  2. Karen says

    April 1, 2018 at 12:04 am

    What time of year should mums be planted in North East Texas? Also, are there perineal mums and annual mums, and how do you tell the difference?

    Reply
  3. Jeanmarie says

    October 5, 2016 at 9:53 pm

    I always thought they were perennials, until this year I was them marketed as annuals. I never even really cared for them, and yet almost 90% would come back year after year.

    Guess I was just lucky ;D

    Reply
  4. Jessica says

    February 18, 2015 at 4:58 pm

    All of my mums were rescued from the curb. That’s how I get a lot of plants that just need a little tender love and care.

    Reply
  5. Carol says

    March 10, 2013 at 12:01 pm

    I don’t know if you are still taking comments…but, how do you keep your mums well-behaved? Mine are a bit thuggish and take over everywhere. They don’t die back to the ground in my yard north of Atlanta.

    Reply
    • Alea says

      March 10, 2013 at 12:30 pm

      I suggest dividing them. It is actually quite easy to do. If you don’t have another place that needs plants, then you can give them to friends to plant in their yards.

      Reply
  6. Jami says

    September 21, 2010 at 2:31 am

    I do try to get mums and plant them when they're done in the pots, but for me they tend to get smaller each year and if they are in a colder zone in our yard, they don't make it through the winter. But I still try each year- can't bear to throw them out. 🙂

    Reply
  7. Alea says

    September 15, 2010 at 4:55 am

    Racquel, I have never lived in a home longer than 5 years, so I will defer to you on this matter. 🙂

    Reply
  8. Racquel says

    September 15, 2010 at 12:45 am

    They tend to be short lived perennials from my experience in the past. I've had them last about 5 or 6 years at the most.

    Reply
  9. vickie says

    September 15, 2010 at 12:40 am

    Alea,
    I love your Mums -I quit growing them as they got too big -with your advice maybe I'll buy some.
    vickie

    Reply
  10. Jean says

    September 14, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    Great post! I have a hard time keeping my mums also but I do have a couple that are perennial.I tend to add them to containers for fall so they don't survive.I got beautiful, large plants 5 for $20 this year and hope to plant them. Jean

    Reply
  11. Zoey says

    September 14, 2010 at 11:04 pm

    Good advice. I have a tough time getting mums to survive the winter. I finally stopped buying them.

    Reply
  12. zentmrs says

    September 14, 2010 at 10:56 pm

    I love mums! I have never tried to keep them, but will with mine this fall! Thanks for sharing!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




Prep-Ahead Breakfasts and Lunches by Alea Milham

Search

Prep-Ahead Meals from Scratch Where to Buy

Recent Articles:

How to attract wild birds to your yard.

Tips for Attracting Winter Birds

use succession planting to grow more food

How to Use Succession Planting to Grow More Food

Want more bees in your garden? Here are Tips for Attracting Bees to Your Garden including planting early blooming bee-friendly plants near your garden.

Tips for Attracting Bees to Your Garden

BROWSE:

  • Blog
  • Cookbooks
  • Recipe Index
  • Members Area

ABOUT:

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclosure

Welcome. I'm Alea!

On Premeditated Leftovers I share simple recipes made with whole foods, practical shopping tips, time saving techniques, and meal planning strategies. I also share tips for minimizing food waste, so more of the food that is purchased ends up on the table.

While volunteering as a budget counselor, I realized that food is the element of most people’s budgets where they have the greatest control. I set out to develop low-cost recipes from scratch to prove it’s possible to create delicious meals on a limited budget. Eating well while spending less is about more than just creating recipes using inexpensive ingredients; it’s about creatively combining ingredients so you don’t feel deprived and are inspired to stick to your budget.

Copyright ©2023, Premeditated Leftovers™. All Rights Reserved.
Design by Pixel Me Designs