Time for Mums

This year, for only the third year in a verrry long time, Pinder’s Nursery is growing mums!  With Ian out of college and back in Martin County, Marvin has the assistant grower he needs to produce beefy, hardy mums, perfect for adding Fall Splendor to your garden.  Chrysanthemums are a crop that require a specific schedule.  Since this is the major planting season for us as growers, Marvin was always spread too thin to pull off a large crop of mums.  This year, Ian scheduled three crops totaling 2,000 unrooted cuttings- one that was planted in mid-September, one in late September, and one in early October.  “The trick to planning and producing a great mum”, Ian says, “is timing.”  They have to be planted at just the right time – a time when they will have enough longer days to support their vegetative phase, the stage when the plants grow.  Once the days shorten and they have about 12-13 hours of daylight, they will switch to their flowering phase and bloom.   Those 2,000 unrooted cuttings will turn out 1,000 1-gallon mums and 365 3-gallon mums.  That’s a lot of brilliant color!  You’ll find yellow and red mums in the Garden Center soon and lavender and orange will be moved there in time for this weekend!