How Long Do Mums Last (And How To Get Them Blooming Again)

Chrysanthemums, or mums for short, are the quintessential plants that will bring glorious color to your garden in the fall. The impressive variety of cultivars includes those with blooms in a full rainbow of colors, including white, orange, red, pink, purple, yellow, gold, lavender, and brown or copper. This cornucopia of both single and globular flowers will brighten up even the darkest day as the weather starts to cool down and the daylight hours get shorter. Chrysanthemums are also the classic fall flower variety that attracts hummingbirds and butterflies to your yard, which only adds to their allure.

Although you can get a myriad of different types of mums, in general, each individual cultivar should last for around four to eight weeks of continuous blooming. To get the most from the chrysanthemums you've planted in the garden or are cultivating in pots for that much-needed fall color, there are a few things you can do to encourage them to bloom again. This includes deadheading, keeping them well-watered and fed, and pinching back the new growth in spring and summer to keep them nice and compact. You might also like to try a simple trick that'll make outdoor mums last all season long, which is to repot them once you bring them home from the nursery.

One of the first things to remember if you want to encourage your mums to rebloom is to deadhead the spent flowers. Deadheading serves a vital purpose. When you remove the spent blooms before they've been able to set seed, the plant responds by producing new flowers because it's trying to complete its reproduction cycle. This means that it puts all its energy into new growth and more luscious blooms. 

Once your mums are flowering, it's important to keep them well-watered to prolong those blooms and stop them from wilting. It's best to water the soil at the base of the plant and make sure the flowers are kept dry. The water will damage them and could be the reason your mums look like they're dying after it rains. To remedy this, you can just gently shake any excess moisture off the blooms. 

For your mums to put on a good show, don't forget to feed them throughout summer, about once every two weeks, with a complete, balanced fertilizer. Finally, if you're growing your chrysanthemums as perennials in the garden, you need to pinch them back to encourage bushy growth and lots of flowers. When the plants are around 6 inches tall, nip back the growth tips, as this will result in lateral branches developing. You can also snip back these laterals once they're about 6 inches long, but refrain from doing any more pruning after July to make sure you're not cutting off developing flower buds.