Enjoying Your Garden Mums: This Fall & Next Year
There are a number of ways to improve the survivability of the "garden mums" that are so beautiful in our gardens this fall. Here are some of the things you can do to help your mums be ready to grow next spring. 1) Plant your mums as early in the fall as possible so they can get their roots established before the ground starts to freeze. 2) Use good compost, peat moss or a good quality potting soil like Metro Mix 360 mixed 1/3 by volume with the soil you are going to use for planting. The top of the root ball should be level with the surrounding soil when planting is 
finished. 3) Loosen the roots of the plant if they are tightly compacted in the container you purchased. This will help them get new roots out into the soil in their new home. 4) Use a starter fertilizer, like Bio-tone® Start Plus, mixed in the soil that is going back in the hole according to the directions on the package; this will stimulate those good healthy roots to get growing. 5) Soak the plant when it is planted by flooding the hole with water after the soil has been placed around the root ball. Water the plant every second or third day if we don't get rain. 6) Mulch the plant with about one inch of mulch when planting. In mid-December or when the ground begins to freeze and the top of the plant looks brown and dry cover the top of the plant with leaves or straw. Do not cut the top of the plant back. 7) About mid-March when we get a mild day remove the leaves or straw you put over the plant in December to protect it during the winter. In April you can trim back the dead top to the new shoots. Fertilize at this time.
Years ago our grandmothers had a limited selection of flowers that would bloom and provide color in the garden during the fall season. The consumer was interested in new varieties that would bloom over a longer period. They wanted plants that bloomed in August all the way through the fall to Thanksgiving. The marketing people asked the mum breeders to develop plants that would bloom over a longer period of time and more colors and plants that would stay compact and not get scraggily.
Over time the breeders came up with very compact varieties that had hundreds of flowers and new colors like white petals with yellow centers. Some even had more fragrance. All these "new" characteristics were the drivers of the new varieties and hardiness was not one of the big issues. Following the suggestions above will help your plants survive our Ohio winters. Snow cover will also help our plants overwinter.
Now with these easy steps you should have your mums surviving the winter. Send any questions to info@meadowview.com and we'll do our best to help you.
30 years of Growing
Meadow View Growers
New Carlisle, OH
www.meadowview.com