How Do Mums Reproduce – A Small Guide To Growing Fall’s Best Flowers
Chrysanthemums are probably the most known fall messenger in gardens and parks. With its strong and unmistakable scent, chrysanthemums, nicknamed mums, are available in about 30 species boasting a dizzying array of colors, shapes and sizes, showy mums can bring plenty of autumn flavor to your garden or home and coordinate with any color scheme, taking the energy and the vitality of the year’s richest season all the way into the winter. To enjoy this diverse show, here are several details on how mums reproduce, as seen on Homeguides.sfgate.com.
The plant produces tiny seeds that germinate after dropping to the ground. The growth won’t start though until temperatures rise to 18-20 Celsius degrees in spring. But if you want to start from scratch because you never had any mums growing in your garden, then sow the seeds outdoors in nutrient-rich soil in May. Because of their small size, the seeds cannot be buried in the ground because they fail to produce sprouts unless they remain on the soil surface. Germination commonly takes up to three weeks in a warm and sunny location with damp soil conditions.
At the same time, it is important to know that mums also grow from stem cuttings. Each of the cutting should be at least 15 cm in length and also have some foliage for the photosynthesis process to occur. After getting the cuttings, press them into a clean potting medium, such as sphagnum peat moss, and then kept indoors and exposed to indirect sunlight, such as on a windowsill. The cuttings will quickly develop into new plants.
Since most of these fall flowers grow in small shrub formations, mum roots become tangled and clumped, making nutrient, oxygen and moisture absorption difficult. As a result, the mums do not produce as many flowers as in past years over the fall. In this context, every three to five years, dig into your mum garden during spring when the plants grow actively. Carefully pull the root clumps apart, and plant them separately so you’ll have more mums decorating the garden and with healthier and more colorful blossoming in autumn.
If you want to enjoy the same color, shape and scent show every fall, then, starting spring till July, pinch or cut back the stems to encourage more flower budding points and stronger limb structures. When mums have a dense shrub appearance, they generate more flowers for seed production. The new plants grow more vigorous and this is why they last more if cut and put in a vase inside.
