Because we mostly treat fall mums like annuals, the time that we have to enjoy these harbingers of fall is relatively short. Often, we find that for our investment, the time we get to spend enjoying autumn mums in bloom is too short.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Mums can last for months with a good start.
Often, don’t set ourselves or our fall mums up for the best success.
That success starts when we buy our mums. And no, the biggest, brightest, bloomingest mum is not necessarily the best plant to choose. (In fact, it’s really not!)
Jump to:
- 1. Buy Mums with Buds That Are Mostly Closed
- 2. Opt for Mums That Aren’t Fully Blooming
- 3. Look for Plants with Small & Tiny Buds Behind the Blooms
- 4. Avoid Mums with Brown, Dead, & Dying Flowers
- 5. Check Foliage for Signs of Fungal Disease
- 6. Skip Wilted, Dried-Looking Mums
- 7. Skip Mums with Dried Out Soil
- 8. Find Plants with Even, Rounded Globe Shapes
- 9. Avoid Mums with Broken Stem or Bare Patches (These Won’t Fill In)
- A Few Tips to Keep Mums Blooming Once You Get Them Home
1. Buy Mums with Buds That Are Mostly Closed
Mums that are full of bright blooms and colors may attract you first in the store or garden center, but they’re not really the best mums to buy.
Mums that are already in full bloom have spent a good deal of the flowers and color they have to give. So, if you’re buying them in full bloom, you’ve missed a lot of the show.
Closed buds = more potential flowers.
Instead, buy mums with many unopened buds. Those that are mostly closed have the most left and the best blooms ahead of them -- for you to enjoy!
2. Opt for Mums That Aren’t Fully Blooming
It only takes a few days of sun and good care for mums to open up, so don’t worry that your mums will leave you with nothing to show when you get them home.
The opposite is true. Mums that have closed buds or are only starting to partially open are ready to spring forth and flower.
The flowers with barely open buds -- or just a few random flowers that have just opened -- are those that have not spent their buds before you bought them but that are ready to pop.
Mums tend to bloom in big flushes, especially initially, so buying a plant with just a few flowers tells you it’s ready to start that big flush. You'll have many flowers and bright colors on fresh blooms in just a matter of days.
Different colors and varieties tend to bloom at a little bit of a different time, some earlier, some later.
3. Look for Plants with Small & Tiny Buds Behind the Blooms
Look past the colorful blooms to the stem tips behind.
Do you see tight buds there? Are there smaller buds behind those buds?
Do you see a mix of almost open flowers, fat buds, tight buds, and tiny buds all in different sizes and stages?
If you see many buds at different stages, this tells you the plant has not budded out, and it has flushes ahead of it.
Buy these plants. They have several weeks of blooming yet to come.
Then, take good care of the plant. Deadhead wilting, dying blooms to let those back buds come forth and prosper.
4. Avoid Mums with Brown, Dead, & Dying Flowers
Brown, dying flowers can indicate a couple of things --
- The plant has been blooming for some time -- long enough for the buds to start dying off, which takes a week or two
- The plant might have been being watered overhead (which is easier and common in plant nurseries and garden centers that have hundreds of plants to water at a time). This causes flowers to rot rather than fade naturally.
You may not be able to avoid buying mums that were watered overhead, but the plants can tolerate this better with closed buds than with open flowers. Brown, rotting flowers indicate some flower rot has already started. This is just not your best specimen plant. Buy another.
This is another good reason to buy mums with the buds still closed!
5. Check Foliage for Signs of Fungal Disease
Look over the stems and leaves of the mums.
- Do they look spotty?
- Is there a white film that looks almost like dust on the plant?
- Are there dark spots or patches on the stems or the leaves?
Any of these could indicate fungal diseases or powdery mildew. Diseases like these set in in cool fall weather, especially in plants that have been watered overhead. Too much constant moisture from watering the plants can also cause general foliar death and rot.
These are not the plants you want. If most or many of the plants look like this, the maintenance and growing conditions may have set them all up for failure. Or, diseases could be spreading between close-kept plants. You may need to consider buying elsewhere.
Here’s another buying tip -- if, by chance, you see garden center workers watering the plants and they water at the top of the pot/bottom of the plant at the soil line, you know they’re doing it right.
Or, if you see little hoses and drop irrigation nipples leading to each plant, you know they are also not being watered overhead.
These are good signs of good care and proper watering techniques!
6. Skip Wilted, Dried-Looking Mums
If plants are drooping and wilted, they have been left too long without adequate water. That’s stress your plant doesn’t need, and it’s already affecting their bloom abilities and buds.
- Drought stress can cause bud death, stop buds from opening, and cause flowers to drop prematurely.
- Skip plants that look wilted, whose stems and leaves are bending or drooping.
- The stems should stand up firmly, and the leaves should firmly stand out from the plant. Neither should bend down toward the ground.
- None should be limp.
When buying, assume that if the plant has been left to wilt or dry out once, it’s been left that way before (maybe many times before). That plant has been fighting a lot of neglect and stress.
7. Skip Mums with Dried Out Soil
Mums should not be allowed to wilt or dry out. The top of the soil can feel a little dry, but if you stick your finger in the soil, there should be some indication of moisture an inch or so down.
The soil in the pot does not have to be soaking wet, but it should show signs of recent moisture.
- The soil should not be dusty and dry
- Soil should have a little spring if you push down on it
- The soil should not be pulling away from the edges of the pot (indicating contraction and compaction from drying out)
Again, if you find plants in this condition, assume it has happened before and assume that the plant has been stressed in repeating cycles.
8. Find Plants with Even, Rounded Globe Shapes
Mums are slow-growing plants. The shape of mums will not change in any significant way once you get it home.
If a plant has been crowded in with others, its stems may be pushed up a little, and those may relax down a bit. You can usually tell when this is so.
For the most part, however, the shape you see is the shape you get, at least for this year. So, be choosy about the shape for the display you are going for.
- Avoid misshapen plants that are not even most of the way around
Leggy plants with long, reaching stems indicate that the plants have been growing in the shade and reaching for light. At this point, you’d only be able to correct this with shaping and pruning, but if you do that, you’re likely to be cutting off many or most (or all) of your potential buds and blooms.
9. Avoid Mums with Broken Stem or Bare Patches (These Won’t Fill In)
That slow-growing nature means that if a stem or section of a plant breaks, it will basically stay that way. These are plants that have been grown, pinched, and trained for probably 5 or 6 months to get them to the shape they’re in.
- Don’t buy plants with splits, bare spots, or broken stems
- Any splits and breaks you see now will stay there for the whole display time; they just won’t have time to repair and fill in
- Handle plants with care on the ride home -- stems and plant sections can break off easily
A Few Tips to Keep Mums Blooming Once You Get Them Home
The bottom line with mums is to pick a plant whose size and shape you like with most of its blossoming and color ahead, not behind it.
Then, take good, basic care of it. Mums aren’t high-maintenance plants, but there are things you can do to keep them in bloom for much longer -- up to two whole months with good, basic care!
- Keep your mums watered
- Mums like moist, but not soggy, soil
- Check the soil as soon as you get the plants home -- they’ll often need watering!
- Don’t wet the plant
- Water at the soil line
- If possible, keep mums out of rain and overhead watering to avoid rotting the flowers and splitting the plant
- DO deadhead your mums!
- Mums do best in full sun, protected from rain and wind where possible -- six to eight hours is considered full sun
- Full sun will make plants bloom faster, but a little shade or lower light hours will slow the pace and can help extend the bloom period if it’s within reason
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