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I'm looking for a source for chrysanthemum cuttings so that I can grow them for cut flowers for next fall. Does anyone have any recommendations? Thanks!
Hi watersedge. I am the newbie here, but I am sure Terri or Karma or several others may know. I am growing mine from seed in a cut flower garden. I'll make sure one of these fine ladies get back with you.
I purchased from Kings a long time ago, got great plants. You do need to check their zone status. Some mums needed warmer than I get here, so I adopted out my "Kermits"
Drat-they are among my favorites, but I let my enthusiasum overlook the zone needs.
Edited to say "bloom time". We often have one killing frost early in October, then everything else is OK for a couple of weeks.
That spider "Icicle" is lovely...may re-think my resolve about zone envy.
I used to raise show mums and Kings was by far the choice of the majority of the growers. This was several decades ago, Many, though by no means all, were winter hardy in a cold frame in 6B, Columbia, TN where i lived at the time, I'd let the stock plants bloom as well as the new cuttings, so i got earlier blooms and smaller, more charming ones, these we would use for mass in arrangments and the disbuds for the inflection points.
Icicle is very lovely, tough as nails, works well for show and also excellent as a garden mum, best use as a filler around shrubbry, I'd let it get 3 feet or so and then peg it and have a shower of smaller blossoms. Hardy here, 7b without protection. Lilli Gallion (sp) is also fairly tough and works for pegging but not as vigirous or as hardy as Icicles, but the striking color combination is quite useful.
Hey Suzy most show mums will get pretty tall depending on how many stems you want, 3 is usual and then you disbud for the large blossoms, These tend to be a bit awkward as they are quite large and you need an enormous arrangement to carry them off, lots of them will hit 5 feet or better. If there is a mum club in your neighborhood, go talk to them as they will know what works best there, also go to a show, you will see mums in amazing configurations, it has been decades since i did much so I've forgotten the terms, but tree form and waterfall forms are just a start, mums are very ameanable to frames. The pegging was my idea as the mums would flop badly without staking, but if you peg them they usually stay put :)
staking something, usually with hairpin like stakes in a bent position, imagine an umbrella sunk into the ground and the stems tied to its ribs, usually only a few stems but you can do an umbrella with many flowers, old fashioned roses ( pre 18 80's) are frequently shaped like this
Or Pupil, You just bend a stem down to the ground with a nice arch to make it pretty. Don't just pull it close to the ground and smash it -- think artistic...a preschooler could walk underneath it, like a bridal arch.
Now, If you step on it with your foot where it meets the ground, that is pegging. Except you can't do that and still eat and go to work, so you put a U shaped thing (like a giant bobby pin) over it and push it in the ground to hold it. That is pegging.
On roses little stems pop up all along the cane,,,but I didn't know mums would do that. Can't even imagine, tough of course I've seen the show beds where the plants are taller than the lady and man that are growing them. LOL Disbudding is not for the usually for the gardener. Disbudding is to make one single flower bigger you take off all the side ones -- Peonies, and Mums and Dahlias are the main 3 I know about... but you could probably put carnation and a host of others on the list, too.
My problem is that if I have a rose with 6 long, long canes peg to the ground. It looks like a sparkler or peeled banan or something -- like they are all upside down...it really only looks good if one side of the rose is up against the building, shrubbery or somethhing so al the canes come out of one side only.
