Guide to Caring for Your Potted Mums

Mums are perhaps the most popular potted flower. Given the incredible variety of colors and styles of mums available, you can easily pick out those that appeal to you and match with the rest of your landscape – or interior décor. If you are just getting started in the world of growing your own flowers, you may be a little nervous about this task. Rest assured, however, that mums are pretty easy to manage, and you’ll be able to enjoy them for a long time by just providing basic care. 

With this article, we want to point you towards a few key tips that will help your mums thrive in their pots. If you have any other landscaping needs on your Jackson, WY area property, please reach out to TLC for assistance. With design, installation, and maintenance services, we have been able to serve countless area residents and businesses in recent years. We hope to hear from you soon!

Three Big Keys

Let’s dive right into the top keys for keeping your mums in great condition while they live in your pots. 

• Plenty of sun. You won’t be surprised to learn you need to place these pots in a sunny area to make sure the plants get the light they need to thrive. Specifically, if the pots are going to live inside, get them into a place where the sun will come through the windows and bathe the flowers with light. Of course, as the seasons change and the sun’s position is different relative to your house, you may have to adjust where the pots rest. While time in the sun is beneficial, your mums probably won’t fare well if they have to deal with high heat. So, plants that are going to live outdoors should be somewhere that gets shade during the hottest part of the day. 
• Tend to your mums. As time passes, you can’t expect to leave these plants alone and have them thrive. They’ll need to be regularly maintained by pulling off old blooms and any dead growth. Leaving old growth on the flowers for very long will take nutrients and moisture away from the healthier parts of the plant, and that could lead to the whole plant falling into poor health. Fortunately, these are not large plants, so the process of tending to them only takes a matter of minutes. 
• Get the water right. Letting your mums dry out is a recipe for failure. With that said, drowning them in abundant water isn’t a winning formula, either. Take care to keep the soil moist but not completely saturated, so the plants will always have water available to draw up when needed. You will need to monitor each pot closely and adjust how much water is applied based on changing weather conditions like temperature and humidity. 

If you nail the three points above – finding plenty of sun, pulling away dead growth, and offering the right amount of water – your mums will be in a great position to thrive. Of course, like any skill, you’ll get better at this with practice, so don’t worry if your first efforts fall a little short of expectations. 

Breaking Out of the Pots

After your mums have enjoyed a blossoming life inside their pots, you might choose to transplant them out into your garden. Moving mums out of pots and into the ground is a relatively easy task, especially if they are in good health when you do the transplanting. Dig a hole for each plant that offers plenty of room for the roots, and give it ample water at the start. You may also want to use a balanced fertilizer to make sure the plant has enough nutrients available to settle into its new home. As was the case when the plants were in their pots, you need to pick a place in your garden that will offer plenty of sunlight and you don’t want to select a spot where water is going to pool and overwhelm the mums with moisture. 

Seeing the Big Picture

Most likely, your potted mums are only one part of a larger vision for the beauty of your property in the Jackson area. If you love to live on a well-maintained piece of property, consider reaching out to TLC for help with that land. We can create a design to elevate the landscape, or we can craft a maintenance plan to keep it looking great all year long. Get in touch today and learn more about what we have to offer. Thanks for visiting TLC!