they come in an array of colors and are one of the most beautiful flowers you
can grow in your home garden let's look at growing chrysanthemums or just mums
now you can buy chrysanthemum plants from your garden center
they are usually sold in areas which have plants that require indirect light however you can grow
chrysanthemum outdoors you can grow them in full sun as well as in partial shade
and chrysanthemums belong to the dahlia family this also includes flowers like the sunflower
daisy and zinnia but they come in a lot of different variations there are a lot of types of
chrysanthemums that you can find so you can get a plant from your garden center and then just plant
it in the ground in this case you can see that there are about four plants in this one container
that was available in the garden center so you can either split them or you can plant them as a whole
now i recommend that you plant all of them together because it creates a nice
bouquet of flowers it looks quite beautiful
and there are very nice bright colors available for the chrysanthemum plant
and here you can see one more chrysanthemum plant that we had is being planted in our atrium
area this was like a courtyard area which receives indirect light not full sunlight
however i found that chrysanthemum grows very well either in full sun or in partial sun
and you can grow chrysanthemums in containers too here you can see a beautiful white chrysanthemum
flower growing in a container here is another variation beautiful colors and this one actually
has two colors and you can see it's a beautiful looking plant growing in a very small container
this plant is quite large but it's still growing in a small container and still giving us a lot
of blooms and here's a yellow one one of my favorites these are also called pom-poms or the
pom-pom chrysanthemum very beautiful looking plant and these are available in costco if you have a
local costco nearby these are usually available in spring and i've seen it almost every year so
there's a good chance you can get this from your local garden center like a costco or a home depot
and grow them in your home garden now just look at how many flowers this plant produces
now this plant actually blooms once a year in most locations but in southern california they bloom
twice a year they bloom once in late spring and then once when it's the arrival of the fall season
and you can see here we have planted all our chrysanthemums in containers in front of our home
and they look quite beautiful there are different colors each one of these is a different colored
chrysanthemum and all these chrysanthemum plants they look just absolutely amazing when grown in
containers they give you excellent blooms and in my opinion the chrysanthemum may be the most
underrated flower that you can grow in your home garden and now let's look at the blooming period
the most common time the chrysanthemum plant will bloom is when fall arrives
that's when the cooler weather sets in the days are shorter that's the most common time that the
chrysanthemum plants will flower however if you are in places like southern california
chrysanthemum flowers bloom twice a year you can see another bloom of chrysanthemums in late spring
and then the most important blooming time is of course the arrival of fall
instead of looking at the clock and the calendar just look at your chrysanthemum plants the day
they start blooming that's the arrival of your fall season the days have gotten shorter and
you're ready to start your fall garden nature has its own way of telling us when the seasons arrive
now let's take a close up look at the flower buds here you can see this is how the buds look like
and they will open up into these beautiful blossoms the chrysanthemum plant is an
abundant bloomer you can see how many blooms we have on this plant
now the chrysanthemum plants will start blooming and they will produce blooms
all through late spring or fall and then once it's the end of the flowering season
you can actually see the flowers turning into a different color
and these are just the flowers drying out and you can see the yellow flowers are now becoming
brownish and then the white flowers have a little bit of a pinkish tinge or a purple tinge
and now let's look at the harvest of the flowers now you can harvest the whole stems
these make excellent cut flowers that you can put in your flower vase but the way we are using these
flowers is by just harvesting the flowers and then setting up floral decorations along with some
lamps and this coincides exactly with the festival of diwali which happens in the winter season
and that's when the chrysanthemums are in full bloom now let's look at pruning you need to
prune your chrysanthemum plant regularly so as soon as the flowers dry you need to prune them
and all i really do is take a container you know just chop off the dried leaves and stems and the
flowers as well and this will help keep your chrysanthemum plant very clean and this is the
most basic maintenance that you need to do in order to have good chrysanthemum plants
and this encourages more blooms because you're giving ample sunlight
to the whole plant and the buds that are hidden will now get enough sunlight and enough energy to
grow into more blooms so just make sure you're doing this during the growing season and some
people recommend pinching off the birds of the chrysanthemum and i have found absolutely no merit
in doing that just let your chrysanthemum plant grow naturally it will produce abundant blooms no
matter whether you pinch the birds or not they still produce a lot of blooms as you see here
and make sure that you remove all the dried leaves from the bottom as well and while you can toss
this in your compost bin i would suggest keeping the plant clean so that you get less diseases
on your plant now as far as insects and diseases go the chrysanthemum plant really isn't affected
by any insects or diseases because it itself produces a chemical compound called pyrethrins
which deter insects however there are some people who do get aphid attacks on their chrysanthemum
plants and in that case you can just spray it with neem oil or with the insecticidal soap
and i'll provide links to all these products in the comments and the video description
below and that's enough to deter any pest on your chrysanthemum plant now the other
maintenance activity you need to do for your chrysanthemum plants is to make sure they are
well organized when they grow they will sprawl and become an uncontrollable bush
in that case you can just tie them up just use any kind of a string to tie them up and they look very
beautiful they look much more organized almost like a bouquet of flowers just growing right
from the ground and i have found that just doing the simple step gives you very good looking plants
now at the end of the season you're looking at a very hard pruning that needs to be done
and this needs to be done during the first or the second year of growing the plant
where you completely remove the plant till the base now remember that the plant still has a lot
of roots in the soil and you can also see a lot of small shoots that will eventually grow into
plants and every year i do this and every year the chrysanthemum plants come back vigorously during
the spring season now while it's okay to do this for the first couple of years i'll show you what
you need to do after year two or three but you can see here all the plants are pruned very well
and this will now be ready for the next season now after year two or three depending on how quickly
your plants grow it's important to repot your chrysanthemum so what do we do we take out the
whole plant and then we split the plant now this is also one way of propagating the plant where
you can just take the plant and then break it into pieces each of which will become a separate plant
and the idea here is to remove as much potting mix as possible and the reason for doing that
is to make the chrysanthemum plants roots a little shorter so that they can grow back again when the
next growing season comes in so if you're trying to salvage the potting soil as much as possible
all these roots that come out of the potting soil will go into the compost bin
and all the plants that are remaining will be put back into the container
the main plant will be put back into the container which it replaced and all the other small plants
can be used to plant in other locations of your garden now in the container mix we are amending
the container mix with some other things so in our container mix out of everything that we salvaged
we are adding some peat moss some perlite and some compost we always have homemade compost on hand
if not you can buy compost or potting soil at your garden center but we just amend it with
more of the same mix peat moss perlite and compost and this is an excellent growing medium
for chrysanthemums the compost itself provides a lot of nutrients you can add earthworm castings
to your potting mix for more nutrients and you can also add some kind of a fertilizer
like this knockout rose fertilizer which i really like an organic fertilizer that will help feed
your chrysanthemum plants and this needs to be added once when you're mixing the potting mix
and about two or three months in succession after that now here are the plants you can see there
are a lot of plants that we got from splitting our plant and this is one way of propagating
the chrysanthemum plant now there's another way of propagating the chrysanthemum plant and that
is by cuttings this plant is extremely easy to propagate via cuttings so all you do is take
some cuttings from a chrysanthemum plant that's already growing and then prepare some potting
mix and prepare a container where you will be rooting your cuttings and you can use any kind of
potting mix or you can use a mix of peat moss and perlite that's an easy mix for starting cuttings
and you can dip them in rooting hormone if needed it's totally optional
and all you do is just keep your cuttings well watered for a few days
and they will grow into individual plants that you can repot or replant elsewhere
now we got our chrysanthemum plants to our new home as well and as you can see they
survived the move and they're growing very well beautiful looking chrysanthemums these are dual
colored chrysanthemum plants very beautiful looking ones and we have several other colors
you can see here these are quite beautiful plants and the flowers are just amazing and you know once
again chrysanthemums are one of the underrated flowers that you can grow in your garden and there
are so many different types and varieties that you can really have a very productive garden and
remember this is a fall bloomer in most areas look at the flowers they are just absolutely gorgeous
so there we have it folks that was our episode on growing chrysanthemums or just mums
let me know if you like growing this flower and what do you use it for make sure you hit
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