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Confused about mums? Pot or plant
Starting a new gardening column is a lot like turning over that first shovelful of dirt to start a new garden. Both the freshly dug earth and the blank page are a new beginning, an opportunity to grow or write something that hopefully others will find useful and enjoyable.
For a garden or a gardening column, it’s nice to know who’s doing the digging or writing. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m a lifelong Southside gardener who is a bit obsessed with gardening. People often call me a gardening geek. I grow a little of everything, collect gardening tools of all kinds, and even enjoy mowing my lawn. I’m fascinated by the world of plants and the many discoveries waiting to be dug up in a garden.
Through this column I hope to share some of those discoveries and along the way provide useful information for both new and experienced gardeners.
So whether you feel lost in the garden centers and aren’t quite sure what to do with those mums that are for sale now or you are ordering specialty mums for spring planting, hopefully you’ll find something of interest here each week.
So what should you do with those mums in the garden centers right now? Either enjoy them as container plants for the fall season or plant them out in the garden.
If you grow them in containers, they won’t come back in the spring, so plan to throw them out when they’ve finished blooming. If you decide to plant them out in your garden, they might come back in the spring. Choose a location in full sun with good drainage and plant them now. Yes, now. Today.
Plant them as soon as you can to give them time to get established before really cold weather settles in for the winter. Then in early December, cover the base of the plant with several inches of mulch but don’t cut the plant back.
In early spring, when the first green shoots come up from the base of the mums, cut back the old stems and foliage. Soon after Memorial Day and again right after the Fourth of July, pinch back each stem to encourage branching and the development of more flower buds. By fall, if all goes well, you should once again have beautiful blooming mums in your garden, and may continue to have them for years to come.
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