Mums The Word...

One of my long dormant gardening interests has always been a passion for mums. It started I suppose with the traditional garden mums that pop up at home centers every fall, but it definitely grew from there once I was introduced to all of the truly amazing cultivars and Japanese shaping techniques known collectively as Kiku. I first ran across them when researching a visit to the NY Botanical Gardens a few years ago. Here are just a few of the amazing shapes:

Kengai: Mum Cascades - NYBG

 

Ozukuri: 1,000 Blooms - NYBG

Ogikui: Single Stem - NYBG

Of course you can't just go out to the garden center and pick these up, so it means planning ahead and special ordering plants via mail order to get started. I went with King's Mums out of Oregon which is one of the largest providers in the country of the special varieties used for the Kiku methods. If you check out their site you'll quickly see that there are a ton of different types and varieties of mums. I decided to start with a sampler pack to get started and have a chance to try out a variety of different types of mums. That way I get a chance to experiment a bit and see what works, what I like, and exactly what it takes to grow the different styles. 

CLICK BELOW TO READ MORE!

Because mums are grown from rooted stock, they don't actually start the plants until you place your order. That means it takes about 3-4 weeks from the time you order until the time you actually get your mums. I placed my order back in April, and the mums arrived right on schedule the week of Memorial Day. Here's what they looked like when they arrived:

Mum Starts - Memorial Day 2012

Jason was pretty impressed that the 20 plants came safely packed in the tiny Priority Mail box that you see at the top of the photo. Every thing came through with out a problem. The first step was to replant the mums into 4" pots for a few weeks to get them strong enough to survive in the garden and allow their new roots time to grow and expand. Here's the crop after they were all potted up:

Potted up and ready to grow!

Because I went with a variety pack, each of the plants is a different cultivar. Each plant is tagged with its name, as well as its height, color, and bloom type. After four weeks of careful strengthening in the 4" pots it was finally time to go ahead and plant out the mums in the newly created mum bed out back:

Mum Bed 2012

The bed will be a mixture of different styles of mums. This is designed to be the "home" for the root stock from which future mums will be grown. As you can see from the representative photos that I started the post with, these highly stylized forms of mums are usually grown in pots. Basically once the bed is established, I'll use cuttings from these plants in future years to create different projects like those in the sample photos. 

I am going to attempt two small cascade style plantings this year on an experimental basis just to see how it goes and what I can learn. Surprisingly there is not a ton of information/instruction available on this particular horticultural art-form, so I'm anticipating quite a bit of trial and error! Check out my post later this week for a peek at the early stages!