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All right, welcome to this week’s Growing Wisdom and what I want to talk to you about this week are mums. Mums are one of those that can kind of confound people a little bit. We have got chrysanthemum and it is a huge family of plant. You go to a supermarket or you go to the garden center or you go to a big box store and you find this and you are like, “Wow! They are beautiful. I want to put them in.” And it is a great idea. I do it every year. They do not come back the next year or they come back really leggy. There is really a couple of different types of these that we want to focus on.

The ones that you get that look like this flower are wonderful. You might have them in purple or yellow or even white. And I have got this great white one here with this nice little tight flower heads. Put this and add them to your existing garden. Have them in an area where later in the fall or early next spring you can pop them out and throw them away.

However, there is another type of very hardy chrysanthemum. They come back every year. You do not have to pinch it back. You do not do anything to it. As a matter of fact each year, it gets better and better. And we are going to another part of the garden center and I will show you what that looks like so let us go.

So I am in the garden center and I found these truly hardy perennial mums. Now these perennial mums will come back every year unlike what you get like what I just showed you. Unlike some of the ones you get in your supermarkets that just do not come back as well. These actually come back better. How can you tell the difference? Well one way is to look for names. Some of the great names of the chrysanthemums are things like Sheffield, Clara Curtis, Will’s wonderful, and Venus and Ryan’s pink. Clara Curtis, one of the earlier blooming ones, this wonderful pink color. And these perennial, truly hardy perennial mums, chrysanthemums are a little bit losers than some of the other ones that you get at the garden centers. And that is the other thing.

They look a little bit more natural. They look wonderful in the perennial garden and I put mine either right on the front or just behind some of the lower perennials and they really do look nice. They give a great sort of finish to the garden. This will begin to bloom usually in mid September and will continue up until you get a hard freeze 28 degrees to 29 degrees that will continue. And you can cut these and bring them inside. So a lot different than the annual mums that you but at the garden center which really are not any good after just one year. So I hope that is a pretty good explanation for you of the different types of mums that you can get out there.

Come back every week for all of our tips here at growingwisdom.com.

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