Although a few experienced gardeners will deny that the best cultural code for hardy chrysanthemums says to start them in the spring, right where you want them to flower, there is no turning back the popular trend toward fall planting of blooming specimens.
This trend was made possible to an increasing degree by improved varieties, adequately prepared for retailing in containers.
After all, buying in season does offer many advantages, such as:
1. The chance to observe a plant in actual performance, making possible a more precise selection of color, size, type of flower, and growth.
2. Mums are probably the best plants available for that quick fill-in, or special-purpose displays. Their wide color range permits natural blending or contrasting with any background situation.
3. The absence of insect and disease problems. Such headaches have been absorbed by the grower before you came along. If a plant isn’t clean and vigorous, you don’t have to take it.
Selecting Top Quality Stock
Now let’s review a few basic rules to be followed in selecting a top-quality stock. You won’t get fooled if you keep the following points in mind:
1. In studying the grower’s catalog, try not to let glowing descriptions of flower form and color overshadow comments about growth habits and hardiness. Consider new introductions on a strictly experimental basis.
If the originators should be too far away, they will sometimes accommodate by giving you the name of a nearby grower to whom they may have sold cuttings in the spring.
2. Plants that you see wilting in full sun or wind have either been potted up too late, or have sparse root systems, and often fail to regain sufficient vigor in time to take hold before winter. On the other hand, plants held in pots too long are likely to appear undernourished, with lower leaves browning and shedding.
3. Much as you may yearn for spectacular decoratives, spoons, or cactus types, don’t forget that the low-growing, free-branching kinds of flowers of firm texture are generally more reliably hardy where winters are severe and snow cover uncertain.
4. In the final analysis, let the stolons be your guide! These lively new shoots, sprouting just below the soil surface around the main stem, are the most reliable indicators of a plant’s determination to stay with you year after year.
As one of the best-known Midwestern propagators explains it, “Varieties which produce the greatest number of stolons should be a prime objective of breeders. Such plants are the ones that transplant best. Their root systems are heavier, assuring a better chance to survive our winters.”
Plant Right Away
Assuming that you have found the specimens you want and have brought them home, don’t let yourself be tempted into the alt too common error of keeping one or more of them in the house for a week or two (or three) before setting out.
Once softened up in this way, their chances of re-adjusting to the rigors of outdoor living arc dangerously reduced.
Remember, mums need time to get roots anchored before the hard, deep freeze penetrates. So try to get them established as early as possible, preferably before mid-October in northern latitudes, and by November 1 farther south and along the seacoast.
Choose locations in full sun if possible, but good drainage and adequate spacing are equally important.
Mums are good feeders, too. They like soil enriched with well-rotted manure or compost. Where this character is deficient, the addition of a little bone meal and dehydrated manure well-mixed into the soil will help.
After the ground has frozen hard, cut the tops of your mums down to about six inches, then cover with clean rye straw or salt marsh hay, leaving this as loose and kinky as possible. Stem stubs will help hold the winter cover in place until freezing rains or snow have secured it.
Then keep your fingers crossed until spring. If you selected your plants wisely, chances are most of them will still be with you.
44659 by F. Wallace Patch