Lawn & Garden » Flowers, Shrubs & Trees
Mums Blooming Early
My mums bloomed early. Will I have two crops of flowers? When is the latest that I should pinch the buds?
You will not have two bloom periods with mums. When you see mums returning in the spring from last fall- pinch back until the end of July and then leave them alone. Pinching makes chrysanthemums compact and bushy. They will also produce larger flowers. Pinching is just another name for pruning with your fingers, removing about an inch of stem per pinch. For rooted cuttings start pinching the tips of rooted cuttings when they reach 6 inches. They'll develop additional stems from the leaf nodes below the pinch. When the new stems are 6 inches long, pinch those tips and the plants will produce more stems from the leaf nodes. By late July the single stem plant that you started with earlier that year in May, will have developed into a bushy compact plant with hundreds of stems with buds forming on their tips.