Wednesday, October 15

Mummified!

Wrap your fall garden in colorful chrysanthemums

Monica

When the attraction of the summer garden begins to fade, you can count on mums to come to the rescue. These seasonal plants come in glorious reds, yellows, and oranges, as well as shades of soft pink, rich purple, and crisp white for one final symphony of color before winter sets in. Perhaps even more impressive than their array of colors is their range of heights. From 12 to more than 36 inches tall, they are the perfect players for various openings in the garden.

Flower types

Choosing a mum can be more difficult than growing one. Extensively hybridized by breeders, they are available in dense, button-like flower heads, daisy-like blossoms, fringed or quilled, anemone, incurved, spider, and more. This incredible variety is testament to their ever-increasing popularity. Skilled gardeners use mums not only in their landscapes, but also as topiaries, groundcovers, standards, cut flowers, to accent a flight of steps, or bring new life to containers of exhausted annuals.

Garden mums or pot mums

Brilliant Tiffany

The only distinction beginning gardeners need to make is the difference between garden mums and pot mums. Garden mums are perennials bred to survive most winters. Pot mums, on the other hand, are indoor plants meant only for one season of bloom, usually indoors. Most of the plants sold in the garden centers or nurseries in the fall are a compact variety of hardy garden mums commonly labeled “cushion mums.” These are bred primarily to flower like gangbusters in containers. The Prophets Series from Yoder Brothers, one of the largest producers of mums in the U.S., are cushion mums and account for about 80 percent of the potted mums sold in the fall.

If you’d like to try planting cushion mums in the garden, it’s best to store them in an unheated garage or basement until spring and plant them then, when they can settle in during warmer weather and make better root growth. Water the containers once or twice over the winter, just enough to keep them from drying out completely. Don’t cut them back until spring when you set them out.

In a flower border, garden mums combine beautifully with ornamental grasses and other late-blooming perennials, such as Sedum Autumn Joy, monkshood (Aconitum carmichaelii), Japanese anemone (Anenome x hybrida), and asters (Aster spp.). However, keep in mind that with fall comes frost, which has a bad habit of turning your mum petals brown. So choose mums that bloom after the hottest summer weather has passed, yet allow five to six weeks of bloom time before the first hard frost arrives.

How to grow garden chrysanthemums

Wanda

The best time to plant mums is in the spring, though they are accommodating plants that can also be planted from summer into early fall as long as you keep them well watered. But the earlier you plant them, the longer your mums will have to develop a good, strong root system — a crucial factor in surviving winter. Unfortunately, young plants started from cuttings in the spring are available mainly through mail-order catalogs. The upside to this, though, is that mail order often gives you the widest selection.

A stunning display of blooms is practically guaranteed if you plant mums in the fall and treat them as annuals. All you have to do is pop them into the ground and water them during dry spells. If you want them as healthy perennials, however, provide them with at least six hours of direct sunlight, good drainage, fertile soil and regular pinching.

Mums’ one downfall is their shallow root system, which makes them susceptible to dying out in winter. You can greatly improve their chances of surviving our northern winters by providing them ideal growing conditions, dividing them every other year, and planting them in a protected site. Don’t cut back the dead or dying foliage in the fall and give the plant a good 6 inches or so of organic mulch for further protection.

Pinching

Mums differ from most other perennials in their need for pinching, a simple process that takes mere minutes. Garden mums grown as perennials must be pinched back during the spring and summer to encourage branching and a sturdy, compact plant. Without pinching, mums will bloom, but the plants will get leggy and flower less. Fast growers, spring planted mums will be ready for their first pinch a few weeks after planting. However, overwintering mums should be pinched as soon as they get 4-6 inches tall. Pinch about half of the new growth off the top of each shoot. The exact date of the last round of pinching depends on your cultivar and climate, but should be no later than July 10-15.

Author of “In Search of Great Plants: The Insider’s Guide to the Best Plants in the Midwest,” Betty Earl is a Master Gardener, photographer and lecturer. She writes for numerous regional gardening magazines, is a garden scout for both Better Homes & Gardens and Midwest Living magazines and also serves as a regional representative for the Garden Conservancy. She lives and gardens in Naperville.