Fall Mums Pro-Tip: Wire Them Up To Avoid Flopping and Splaying - October 2025

You bought that big container of mums and put them on your porch.  They look good.  Now, the tough part:  keeping them alive.  And keeping them from flopping wide open and splaying.

First the 'keeping them alive' part.  It is pretty easy:  water them.  And, even better...'bottom water' them via a bucket or pan that they can sit-in.  Otherwise, drag your hose over there and keep 'em wet every few days.  If you're like me and you're dragging your hose around to try to eek out the final few dahlia blooms, then just stop at your mums and spray them down.

As for the second part:  keeping them from splaying wide open?  That part is pretty easy too:  Wire them up.  Here's a post that I shared all the way back in 2017 that is popular every Fall: ProTip: Tie Up Your Mums.  Every Fall since then, we've done the same thing.  Buy the big set of Mums.  Use some twine or garden wire around the perimeter of the blooms to keep them together. 

I wrote a similar post last year:  Tie Up Your Mums To Avoid Flopping - Fall Porch Pro-Tip.

Below is a photo of the large mums that we bought from Heap's Giant Pumpkin Farm down in Minooka recently.  I used some of the velcro garden tape that I use to train everything from trees in espalier to dahlia stalks against supports.  This tape is a bit wider than what I've used in the past, but give it a week or so and it will *disappear* behind the blooms.

My full collection of gardening 'pro tips' can be found here at the /pro-tips tag.