Chryssies

One side effect of Mother’s Day is the leftover potted Chrysanthemums.

If you’ve got some in a bouquet that you particularly like you can try to take cutting of them and propagate them for your garden, but that’s another post topic. If you’re lucky enough to get a potted chrysanthemum, when you’ve finished admiring them in your home you can repot them into a bigger pot, or you can put them in your garden. Sometimes retail sales points will put the prices right down soon after Mother’s Day but I wasn’t that lucky this time.

If you choose to put them in the garden I recommend putting a stake in at the same time. The reason for the stake is to tie next year’s growth to so the stems stay upright, or they tend to flounce all over the place. When the stems aren’t upright the flowers start to head upright and you’re left with ‘bent’ stems. Sometimes these can be incorporated into a flower arrangements but more often than not you have to cut them shorter; not useful.

When you’ve dug your hole, placed the plant and the stake in, and watered it in, it’s best to cut off the flowers to give the roots system of the plant a good rest before starting to pump out growth next year.

As you will note in this photo, I have Arum italiacum in my garden. When planting a new plant you should make sure the space is cleared of all other plant growth but this plant is particularly difficult to get rid of so ‘near enough is good enough’ is a mantra I use when dealing with it…

Chrysanthemums seem to grow quite well in this area, they are an easy care plant that only require a sunny to part sunny spot and good drainage. Chrysanthemum Rust can be a problem, I have one plant that seems to suffer from this more than the others but all I do is spray with an anti fungal bicarb soda spray after cutting back down after flowering. The recipe is easily sourced from the internet.

One practice the more serious chrysanthemum grower does is to cut the new growth back early in the season to promote stronger flower growth (I think) but I haven’t got around to delving into that further. It’s on my list of things to do as I start eyeing off the possibility of growing more flowers and entering the local flower market. Anyhoo, that’s another subject for another blog post.

If you’re into listening to podcasts, I’ve begun a podcast which seems to be happening once a month. If you’re interested in having a listen, The Flowerpot Pen is available on Spotify, Apple, GooglePlay, Anchor and Acast. Check it out!

Til next time!