Love them or hate them: Mums are here to stay. Heres how to care for them.

I have never seen mums as popular as they are in the Midwest (and I’ve lived a lot of places!). I've seen entire landscapes in nothing but mums (seriously?!).
Mums in pots.
Mums around a concrete patio.
Mums by the mailboxes.
And the classic – hay bale, pumpkin, and potted mums (This is the fall display outside every home and business at the first hint of fall).

To be honest, mums are one of my least favorite plants. To grow mums correctly, they take too much effort for a lazy gardener such as myself. They only look good for a short period of time and they are not very interesting or creative plant. That said, they do have a place in the fall garden. Here in Missouri, almost all plant questions I'm asked in the fall consist about the care of mums. Heres the nitty gritty. Plain and simple.

Chrysanthemums – The hardy mum type. Not the kind you get from the florist.

Ideally, these should be planted in the spring. Good garden centers will usually have a selection of mums in the spring, but generally most of us aren’t thinking about mums then. We buy them in the fall when we cant resist the full, gorgeous blooms. So its fall and you just bought mums? Put them in the ground ASAP. The longer you wait, the less time the roots have to establish in the soil, leaving your pretty mums more likely to be killed during the cold winter.

These really need full sun to grow and bloom properly. If you have clay soil that stays wet during the winter, the plants can rot away. A raised bed so water drains freely helps for this, as does amending your soil with compost and peat.

Pinching. For a plant full of blooms that is also tight and compact, pinching is essential. I like to pinch one inch off of each tip every time the plant produces 4 inches of growth. (hold the stem in between your forefinger and your thumb and then pinch it with your thumbnail). Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Do this from spring until July. Every time the plant grows 4”. (High maintenance, right?!)

Fertilize these guys! There are lots of ways to fertilize a plant. You can work some compost into the soil and use sprays or granulated fertilizers. Depending on the type you use, you’ll need to fertilize once a month or twice a growing season. If you are going through the trouble to pinch these guys, you might as well go to the trouble of feeding them too.

Here comes the frost! So now your plants are looking BAD! Cut them down to the ground leaving about 1 “ of stems. Throw the tops in the compost. Mulch those guys well. Make sure they aren’t going to stay wet during the winter.

The following spring is an ideal time to divide these guys. Were your mums falling over and leaving an open center? Divide these every 3 years. Take your spade and cut it in half. Remove the center and compost it. Replant. Apply compost or fertilizer and water it in well.

Love these so much, you want more? All those cuttings can be rooted by cutting with a very clean and very sharp knife, dipping in rooting hormone, and placing in a sterile starting mix. Mist. Mist. Mist. Repot. Fertilize. Pinch. Pinch. Pinch. Now you have a yard full of mums.......(hmmmm.).

Phew!!! As easy as all those steps are for a beautiful mum plant, it hardly seems worth it to me for the short bloom time. But the Midwest loves them and the money hungry and uncreative industry forces them on us. Love them or hate them, they are here to stay. I’m already looking forward to writing an article about mum alternatives!