10/13/2011

The arrival of fall means the end of summer flowers, but this doesn’t have to mean the end of color in your garden or landscape. Chrysanthemum plants have without a doubt become one of the most popular flowers for fall color.
Mums come in a large array of colors and shapes with blooms that can be spectacular. The blooms often last for weeks and the large numbers of blooms on one plant can make quite a show. Mums planted in masses can make quite an impact in a drab fall landscape.
I receive many questions on mums and, in general, people want to know if it is possible to overwinter these plants and keep them from year to year. Here are some tips to consider when growing mums.
Fall maintenance
Often mums are given as gifts or purchased in the fall. There is no problem with this approach, but it makes it much more difficult to overwinter the plant. The root system of a fall planting will be weak and probably will not have time to get established before the cold days of winter. When mums fail to survive a hard winter it is usually due to lack of a strong root system to sustain the plant.
If you plant mums in the fall, make sure to keep them well watered before and even during the winter months. At the time of the first frost, a layer of mulch should be applied around the base of the plant. Remember that mulch is used to keep plants uniformly cold, not to protect them from the cold. Delaying mulching until after the ground has frozen gives the plants time to harden before winter arrives. It is fine to remove the spent flowers, but many gardeners prefer to leave the stems of the plant intact until spring since mums seem to tolerate the cold better this way. Once spring arrives, the mulch can be pulled back and old stems removed.
It may be possible to bring a mum indoors to overwinter in a pot, but this has its limitations as well. Usually there is not enough light indoors to keep the plant going and this becomes a problem for overwintering indoors. It is still worth a shot, though, if you have mums that will likely die anyway from being outdoors. Bring the mums inside to the garage or storage shed before the first hard frost and keep the plants lightly watered during the winter and there is a chance they will be able to survive until spring when they can be planted in the garden.
Spring is preferred
To have the best chance at growing a perennial mum that will return each year, it is necessary to plant smaller plants in the spring. These smaller plants will have plenty of time to develop a strong root system during the summer and bloom naturally in the fall. Spring plants will need to be pinched back during the summer in order to produce the dense branching typical of fall mums.
The overwintering recommendations for spring planted mums are the same as those listed above for fall planted mums, but the difference is that the spring plants stand a much better chance of winter survival, thanks to a strong and developed root system.

- Jason Graves, Horticulture Extension Agent, K-State Research and Extension Central Kansas District, can be reached at 309-5850 or by email at jlgraves@ksu.edu

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