Mums for fall...

[Cole_Robbie]

My first mums made it to market today. One of my purple varieties was the first to bloom. The Mantauk Daisy is the other pic.

[Cole_Robbie]

pics from today.

[BigVanVader]

Gorgeous! You should sell a bunch.

[Cole_Robbie]

Thanks. I wish I had labelled them. I think the purple one in the pics is Padre Cerise (pics on page 1 of this thread) but I am not 100% positive. It is blooming 2-3 weeks ahead of the other varieties. I have two types of "pot mum" as well. The pic above of the single flower is one of them. The other one has blooms that look a month away from opening. I did not realize the different varieties of mums would take such varying amounts of time to bloom.

[MissS]

Ooo la la! Your plants are beautiful. They ought to be a big hit.

[bower]

Yeah they look great and way better than the mums I'm seeing around here. Every grocery chain, hardware store, you name it has potted mums lined up outside the door. For sure they are shipped in from some major enterprise on the mainland. And they are not well cared for in the way yours are, it shows.

So I hope you are taking some market share from the faceless enterprises that mass produce mums!

[Cole_Robbie]

Thanks, both of you, and yeah, Bower, the market for mums this year is ridiculous. They are at every store, it seems. Mine are $5 at market, which is unfortunately low, but that's what it takes to sell as many as I have.

I had one potential customer get talked out of buying by another woman who was with her. As they walked away, I heard one of them say "well they are $3.95 at Wal-Mart." My plants are in bigger pots and have about another month left on the time-release Osmocote that is in the media, which in my mind makes them higher quality, but even that aside, I am happy to be able to come within a dollar of Wal-Mart's price, given that their resources are just a touch greater than my own.

[Cole_Robbie]

Pot Mums:

[KarenO]

I never buy plants from box stores. growth retarded, pesticide ridden and yet STILL often infested and diseased garbage from mega producers is all you will ever find at Wallmart.
Much rather support local growers like yourself. People will drive across town to save a few cents on mass produced garbage. Defies logic.
Your plants look great.
KarenO

[NewWestGardener]

What is the difference between pot mums and regular mums in pots?

I bought a few nice ones from a Chinese grocery store, striped petals with green centers.$ 6.99-9.99. each. I consider this price reasonable considering the amount of work growing those plants.

[Cole_Robbie]

Thanks, Karen.

The pot mums are both much taller, with a longer length of stem between nodes. The other mums grow in a dense, spherical shape. I am guessing that the pot mums are not nearly as cold-hardy. They make a big, pretty plant, though, especially if I can get them to grow in a uniform shape. Some of them lean in one direction or the other.

[NewWestGardener]

Thanks, I think I know what you mean now.
Does early aggressive pinching helps to tame them (pot mums), as a way of shortening the hard stems? Then you'll get smaller flowers.

Unrelated, Chinese has a tradition of grafting chrysanthemums. I remember years ago seeing a magnificent piece of 10,000 blooms on a display in a hotel lobby. If you want to play around with grafting. Here are some examples.

[GrowingCoastal]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

Thanks, Karen.

The pot mums are both much taller, with a longer length of stem between nodes. The other mums grow in a dense, spherical shape. I am guessing that the pot mums are not nearly as cold-hardy. They make a big, pretty plant, though, especially if I can get them to grow in a uniform shape. Some of them lean in one direction or the other.

When I used to plant mum cuttings they would often arrive already bent one way or another. We had to make sure we planted them all curving into the pot so that they would grow a nicely shaped pot of mums. Usually 4 cuttings to a 6" pot. They were also sprayed later on with a growth regulator ( B nine) to keep them short.

[Cole_Robbie]

Thank you. Those grafts to trees are very impressive.

According to the company who sold me the cuttings, the varieties I bought were not supposed to need pinching or growth regulators. I am too new to mums to know for sure if that is true.

Here's two more pics.

[GrowingCoastal]

Your plants look great.
If they sit in a pot nicely without flopping out and keep their shape that's all you can ask for. They are a bread and butter crop for the greenhouse industry, ever popular.