Nice! I didn't buy any mums this year -- just not in the mood.

(Havent bought mums in years once I acquired several hardy mums which we overwinter)

I have an ancient Emperor of China which I tend to ignore as it always looks palely sad and lonesome, flowering in the dog days of late October. One year, I forced it into earlier bloom by putting an upturned dustbin over it but I soon tired of that game. Also,it needs a colony of them to have much impact, and even with continual pinching and stopping, it wants to grow tall ( and consequently falls over in a spectacularly graceless way). And the colour is really wrong for the time of year in my garden (a refined silvery pink).

Well, the ravenous deer in my neighborhood ate all of the flower buds off of mine. (along with eating all of the heuchera and sedums down to the ground, went after the dahlias too.)

raee so sorry to hear that! It's sooo discouraging when deer come along and feast like that.

PM2 that last mum is lovely. I think I may have asked you before, but do you know the name of it?

I have a new mum this year which I can't remember the name of off the top of my head. It's just starting to bloom and I'm confused because I thought it was supposed to be a peachy/apricot color, but the buds are looking awfully red. We'll see in a day or so I guess!

I usually buy some mums as annuals for my front steps in October. They used to overwinter quite well but I find lately they don't. I'm wondering if it has anything to do with how they are grown now - for goodness sake you see them for sale - in bloom!! - in July in some places. In the old days you couldn't find any till at least September, and I usually bought them in October still only in bud stage.

I had quite a few mums in a customer's garden, but I gave up on pinching back. They would grow great in the early season and pinching them back always made them look horrible. So I gave up pinching and just had mums in bloom early!

Rosa, I could start a whole thread on your post! You actually covered the whole plant with a wastebasket? And this inhibited growth but it didn't die or weaken? Please do tell more! Secondly, yes, continual pinching is a pain - especially if they still grow tall and flop. I have that problem with my asters as well. Thirdly - every time I hear someone mention anything about pink in the fall garden, it piques my interest. That has been on ongoing stuggle with myself for years lol!

:)

Dee

Raee, that’s horrible! I have a friend who had deer problems and she swears by spraying her garden with a product that repels deer. It’s a common one that I just forget the name of at the moment. It might be a pain to do every year, but, maybe easier than trying to fence them out.

Dee, that last Mum is ‘Amber Morning’ and Bluestone Perennials still offers it. I first bought it in 2009, so it’s hardy. [g] They have a great selection of hardy Mums.

Chrysanthemum 'Amber Morning' / Bluestone Perennials

By the way, I always pinch back and I never find it makes the plants look ugly. It's just a green nothing plant the whole season until the Fall, which is barely noticeable since every season there is something else interesting going on in the bed. I don't pinch them back too far, I just take off one or two sets of leaves and it basically looks the same after pinching except a little shorter. I leave at least 2 sets of leaves maybe three. As long as they are well watered they stay green and once in awhile I might spray them with Fish emulsion/liquid seaweed when I do the rest of the bed.

Indeed Dee...but I had to do this covering and uncovering every day for weeks...just to get it into flower by August-ish.

As it happens, I am sharpening the chainsaw to make some radical changes to my allotment...which will bring in more sunlight (and allow access with the wheelbarrow)...but also expose me to idiot neighbours. Fortunately, most of them are really slack...in fact, this awful snailly year, a number of them seem to have given up because I can go for weeks without seeing anyone.

Mostly in response to your other post but have gotten mixed up.

I also garden outside my house but as I can scurry back inside if I am not feeling sociable (which is mostly always cos I am desperately shy), I can manage a quick garden chit-chat with the postman and other randoms (although I live in a barren wasteland of urban philistines so there isn't much swapping of plant stuff).

The worst thing (for me) is having all my 'stuff' on display (and honestly, the hard standing outside my house is a repository of various metal-work stuff (youngest offspring) including a huge and immovable treadle lathe, plus the shelves I acquired when I was planning a plant stall (what was I thinking?)...but now are filled with random rubbish I don't really want to lose but have no space indoors - pots, apple-press, large terrarium, ancient loopframe bike...as well as plantage I cannot reach (because of lathe and such). I hope my neighbours just consider us to be eccentric and picaresque (rather than filthy and anti-social).

I came across an old post of mine , in response to Heruga, who was wondering why we didn't have AN ENTIRE FORUM dedicated to chrysanthemum. Even taking into account the Japanese thing, I was kinda incredulous to think someone had that much love for chrysanthemums. My reply was not polite...in fact, I am amazed at how civil and considered I am these days, compared to my swearily sarcastic postings of only a decade ago.

Oh, Camp -- I do love you!

OMG, rosa, you do make me laugh! "urban philistines"!!! And I do think we are transatlantic twins lol. So many times I am sitting here thinking "yes!! me too!!" when I read your posts (although I find it very hard to think of you as antisocial!!). But honestly, my yard is the same way - I have too much "stuff"! And at the end of a long gardening day (especially as I get older) I am just too darn tired to put that stuff away - IF I can even find room for it in my garage (which honestly is just a big garden shed, since there's no room to put our cars in it!). And then that temporary spot where I left my stuff ends up becoming more permanent, even if it is next to the house, or by the back stairs, or between the raised beds. If anyone (i.e. husband) complains I just tell him if he got out in the yard and helped me once in awhile I'd have more time/energy/inclination to be neater!

PM2, I have to go and check - I think my new mum might be Amber Morning! I'm pretty sure it came from Bluestone, and when I saw your photo above I thought I had seen it before from you, so it's quite likely you enabled me to get that very mum! On my way out to the garden so I will report back!

:)

Dee

O thank you Roxanna. My offspring claim they do too (but it's hard to tell).

Prairiemoon, thanks for the tip - I do use repellents, alternating between dried blood, coyote urine, and a couple of others. But, if they don't wash off (rarely a problem this summer - we are in a "severe drought", it has rained all of 7 times since late May, usually a brief and light rainfall as well) they either wear off more quickly in the unusual heat or the deer are desperate enough to ignore them.

Someone mentioned their mums not overwintering. I have had good success with buying and planting mums when they appear in the garden centers/online in spring - that gives them time to get well established before winter. A couple of the big box plants seemed to only survive 2 years, though.

So PM2, my chrysanthemum is Peaches and Cream. I think I got it from Bluestone, which is funny because it's not on their site anymore. I see it on Select Seeds site, and it's lovely, but it's not what I have lol. I'll have to give it another day or two to fully open to see, but so far I'm not really liking it!

My confusion with your Amber Morning was because I got Peaches and Cream mum, but I also got a dianthus called Sunflor Amber. I guess I took the Amber and the mum and mixed them up lol.

:)

Dee

I was at my nearby independent nursery yesterday and I was impressed with their display:

I stopped by Home Depot this week to purchase a couple of bags of mulch. There was a long line at the outdoor cashier and I was the only customer who didn't have several mums in their cart. I felt like I was breaking some sort of unspoken rule.