Hit the Dirt; Mums

Hi there this is Claire Ackroyd and you're listening to hit the dirt. So here we are in the fall and it's time for one of my favorite gardening rituals. Which is the planting of the focus and the moms took me a long time to understand this process because. At the time the place and the sort of. Attitude that I come from is sort of if you want fall flowers then you have to plant them in spring and on them whereas here you're allowed to just buy them from your local nursery drugstore or supermarket anywhere. Lots of people have moms for sale this time of year farmer's market and plant them and enjoy them. And I think it's wonderful why not you know make it easy and it's a lovely way to sort of flaunt the oncoming of winter because as your garden is sort of dying down for the end of the year you pop in these beautiful bright colored moms and get a long and very colorful bird start to garden at the end of the year you don't have to give up just because winter is right around the corner and the the the quantity variety colors of Mom's

that are available now are wonderful and I love it now. The most commonly asked question that I get is are they Hardy will they come back next year. And the answer to that is a sort of a maybe. And the thing is that with chrysanthemums there are two fundamentally different strains of the same plant. One of the green house moms which are basically grown as a greenhouse crop. They're the same things that you see cut in florist shops or in the summer and Easter even in containers parts of them with great big flowers. These are the greenhouse mounds and they're not hardy at all and they are treated to keep them short to get them going for the pot plants. But the hardy mom so-called which are available now in a very often feel grown all green has grown have very different character the smaller flowers and the little bit tighter denser tougher looking those. In theory Hardy The problem is that all theories about hardiness are sharp. Once you get about north of Boston because you get into an area that normal country

hardiness doesn't take into account and so hardy in Maine sometimes some of them sometimes some of them most of the time some of them never and. A good winter last winter was surprisingly kind to things like this had the most of the heavy snow cover that stayed on the ground and moms made it through the winter very well and a lot of mom's planted this time last year. Blooming again this year but my real answer I think is why do you care. Doesn't matter. Get a bit more european about this and buy them just for the fleeting fun that you get out of them and then let them die. It doesn't really matter if they don't make it they last an incredibly long time and you get full value for your three to five dollars that you spend on them just if they bloom and then pass it on and then you support your local garden center by buying new ones next year. I think they're wonderful whether they make it or not. The thing is too if you want something. That is in bloom now and can be. Kept year after year. There's a growing move by the sort of people who produce these crops of moms for the fall to substitute

asters focus at the moment. There are several nurseries places that sell products that I've seen that have so imitation chrysanthemums in the little short asters and they are completely Hardy that their horticultural sort of aberrations of the native asked of the grows all through the roadside here and there are several nice varieties that are being produced as a fall crop just like the moms are so instead of having to plant them in the spring for full bloom you can plant them right now. And there I wanted to very beautiful as this purple dome and Marie Billard are two of the good old ones that have been around a long time and are being grown as a full crop under sort of greenhouse the conditions and those are completely hardy they want to be planted someplace where they get a reasonable amount of sun and a moderately decent soil that drains adequately but they're very un picky plants and they are gorgeous they have a slightly different character but they're very late blooming tough Hardy great little plants and so if you want to be thrifty with your money plant asters But either way enjoy

both those fall flowers and I'll talk to you again in a week.