Mums...annuals?

wow, I opened this thinking it was going to be a question about homecoming mums and high school annuals!
can you tell I have 2 teenagers that just finished high school?

Mums are perennials, but they need time to develop a deep root system if they are to survive cold winters. They are one of the few plants that are better to plant in the spring. Every mum that I have ever planted in the fall has failed to return the next spring, but spring-planted ones have all been successful.

Okay, here's the deal with mums: If you plant them now, they'll probably not come back next year. However, if you buy and plant them next May/June, let them get established in your garden, and be sure they are well protected over the winter, they'll come back.

Keep in mind that once they're established in this way, they will spread a bit (kind of like their Shasta Daisy cousins). They won't maintian the compact habit of those potted mums you buy in the store duting the Fall season.

Good luck!

Fall mums or Garden mums can be perennials, but a lot depends on your climate and when you plant them. Here's a good explanation from Yahoo answers:
"I think alot of people have touched on this, but it would help to know where you were, or what USDA hardiness zone you lived in. We could answer your question better.

That being said, I worked for a major retail garden center in my area. We sold a whole lot of mums every fall (10's of thousands). But how to categorize them? It's true, mum's are typically categorized as perennials. But planted in the fall, they might not have time to root in sufficiently to survive the winter (November in Michigan is not an hospitable month).
Or as someone else said, if you keep them in a pot, until the last minute in the fall, they are not going to come back reliably.

Conversely, if you pamper them, and mulch them, they could. Or if you had a mild micro-climate.

So our balance was thus: We called them 'Fall Mums' or 'Garden Mums'. We avoided the words hardy or perennial, because we couldn't guarantee it (too many variables). I would guess, that over 50% of my customers used them as seasonal or porch decor, then threw them away after the flowers faded. Few had expectations that the plant would survive the winter."

That said, I have the HUGEST mum in my garden, it's more like a shrub now. Look for "hardy" and plant under lots of mulch in the fall.

Mums will come back for many years. The plant will also get bigger as it matures. I planted a tiny mum plant about 9 years ago and it has matured into a beautiful almost bush. Bulb plants will also come back year after year, as long as the squirrels don't dig up the bulbs and hide them.

They are mums. I have never had a problem with mums, but my MIL insists that she cant get them to come back even once. I say it's because she has 3 little yip dogs digging in her beds, peeing, pooping, etc. Anyway, I think some of the newer colors are not as hardy as the old standards. Anyone at Lowes or Home Depot garden sections should be able to point you in the right direction.

I think depending on the climate mums will come up every year. I have a terrible time with snails eating ours!!

Check with a local garden nursery. Here they do, but I'm all the way accross the country from you in a pretty mild climate. My understanding is some of the flowers we grow here as perennials have to be replanted yearly as an annaul other places.

i planted mums and asters last fall and they have come back beautifully this year, they are huge and just now opening up. even one of the "dead" ones that i just dumped out of the pot under the bushes in back of my bed has come back, though leggy reaching for the sun. i didnt even plant it, just dumped the pot out. ive planted them before and they didnt come back. i guess it depends on how healthy they are. last winter was brutal here (im on long island), i didnt mulch them (unless you count being buried by feet of snow for most of the winter), so i have to think the type and quality of the mums are the most important factor. you can prune them back by about a third in early july if they look nice and healthy and they will take on a better shape. just mark/remember where you plant them so you dont think they are weeds when they come back in the spring, they take a long time to look like anything.

It's my understanding that mums are good for two years. But you need to go to one of your local nurseries, pick the brains of the people who work there, and get what they recommend for your area. Many people here are happy to invest in mums because they add such wonderful color after the other flowers are finished!

I have perennial mums in my back yard that the prior owner (an excellent gardner) planted. They are about 2-3 feet tall and bloom every fall. I buy mums for my front yard every year and have tried to plant some of those in back with the other ones and none of these has ever come back in the spring. I have learned that this is because the fall planting doesn't give them a chance to really take root and survive the winter. So if you want the mums to come back year after year, you should plant them in the spring.

That said...I have never seen a mum for sale in the spring! I might try to overwinter some of my potted mums indoors this year and see if any of them survive to be planted in the spring so that I can add to my backyard collection.

Hope that helps!

Just look at the tags before you buy them to make sure that they are perennials. In general, nursery flowers are better than box stores because they use more consistent growers. I have never had to return plants to a nursery, but have returned enough to Home Depot to only purchase my annuals there!