If you opt to pot and move them, do so before the first hard freeze. This will encourage bushiness, as well as a mass of flower buds ready to bloom in September and October.
Then, clip the copious amounts of blossoms to make bouquets and live arrangements, which will also encourage extended fall blooming. Learning how to prune your perennial mums leads to gorgeous showy blooms! Pinch off spent flowers just under the fading heads to encourage your mums to continue blooming throughout fall. If they do continue to bloom, it will likely not be a profuse as the first round of flowers.
Cut potted mums back to within 2 inches of the soil after they finish blooming. Store them for winter in an area that is about 60 degrees Fahrenheit and is subject to natural daylight hours but not in direct light. Continue to keep the soil moist during this time. If you transplanted the mums in the ground, water them during dry spells.
Pinch back stems just under a leaf set in spring after the stems grow to be 4 to 6 inches tall. What ya do is quite simple:. Do not trim them to be lower than that as it could damage the plant or the plant not grow enough again to produce a bloom this fall.
A nicely trimmed back mum, ready to grow again and be ready for center stage presence come this Autumn! How to cut color back into trim? I'm making a mental note myself to keep ahead of the "pinching" next year, and to 'let them go' after the 4th of July.
I appreciate the tips! Katie, if you cut it back before all the blooms were formed, you may get a "rebloom", but if you had very many flowers before you cut it back then chances are you won't get very much of a show later on. Most mums aren't rebloomers, but deadheading may bring out a small rebloom depending on a number of factors. My mom's mums were not pinched back this year. I told her to just enjoy them early. They can be just as pretty in summer as in fall.
I wanted to bump this post back up because I trimmed my mums close to the 4th of July when they were already getting flower buds, and was very dismayed to see this thread and realize my mistake. Well, guess what?
They're currently loaded with blooms in spite of it all! July 4th is often given as a good cut-off date, not the "it's-way-past-time date". That comes later. It usually is much better to start early and keep them prunned until around that date. Often a first trim that late and especially later does negatively impact the amount of flowers produced. Visual inspection with experience is probably the best way to determine how late you can really get by with, and it will vary with plant species, cultivar, environment, location, etc.
It all boils down to how many potential buds are left after that last trim. If you're a couple of weeks past the time most buds are produced, then it's too late to trim. Dividing mums at least the common kinds won't make them less leggy. They have to be trimmed to keep them lower and more full.
I usually keep the "runner" stems cut back as I keep the top pruned back to keep them from becoming a big spreading mass. I see you stop by July 4th, when do you start cutting them back and how low, all the way to the ground? I start cutting mine back when they get about 4" to 6" tall. I wouldn't cut them below this level.
For best result, this can be done every other week or so. This will make them a lot fuller. I haven't measured them, but I think I try to keep mine below about 8" to 10".
I recieved some planted, bloomed mums from my fiance for Mother's Day this year. I want to keep them alive. I am not going to lie, I lack the green thumb and have only been moderately watering them outside. Are you plants not doing well? Have you been monitoring soil moisture levels? If not, that would probably be step 1. As long as someone else brought this up, I'm interested to know how to divide these mums.
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