It's Fall-Time for Mums

The summer gardens are dead and gone. It’s time for fall mums! Fall is my favorite time of year. There’s a chill in the air; it’s time to pick apples and pumpkins; school football teams are competing; leaves are changing color, but it’s just not fall for me until I go select and purchase a fall mum for my deck.

Each year, I’d help my mother tend hundreds of hardy mums in her greenhouses as we prepared for the busy autumn selling season. During the summer, we’d pinch back the mums so that they would end up bushy and full instead of spindly. We’d also fertilize each individual pot too.

My mother is retired now, so this year, for the first time in a long time, I’ve had to visit someone else’s greenhouse to choose my annual mum.

It’s hard choosing a mum because they are all beautiful. There are several different types of mums: daisy, spoon types, spider mums, and football mums. Mums come in many different colors too. I’ve seen white mums; various pinks-from light pink to a deep, rich magenta; burgundy, purple, orange, yellow, rust, red, and mums in different combinations of colors.

If you’d like a mum for your fall decorating, mums labeled “hardy” or “garden” are what you want. Mums used to be a nickname for “chrysanthemums”, but the name has now been changed to the tongue-twisting “dendranthema x grandiflora”.

I simply display my fall mum on my deck, enjoying it until a really hard frost finally turns it black. If you prefer, you can plant your mums in the garden instead.

If you’re going to plant your mum in the garden, make sure it has sun for at least half the day, though it would do well in the sun all day too. Make sure there is good drainage in your garden, and the soil should be moist, but not soggy.