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!
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.
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.
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.
Do you treat your mums like annuals or do your appreciate them for the perennials that they are?
Fall Gardening Tips
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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
zentmrs says
I love mums! I have never tried to keep them, but will with mine this fall! Thanks for sharing!
Zoey says
Good advice. I have a tough time getting mums to survive the winter. I finally stopped buying them.
Jean says
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
vickie says
Alea,
I love your Mums -I quit growing them as they got too big -with your advice maybe I'll buy some.
vickie
Racquel says
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.
Alea says
Racquel, I have never lived in a home longer than 5 years, so I will defer to you on this matter. 🙂
Jami says
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. 🙂
Carol says
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.
Alea says
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.
Jessica says
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.
Jeanmarie says
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
Karen says
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?