Why I Oughta...

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...

Nat had our two front porch containers (the long, galvanized one and the round white pottery one) done by a professional.  And they look MUCH better than they do when we do them ourselves.    Yesterday, I shared a couple of photos of our large nursery pot of Mums , but on the other side of the front door, the containers - along with a BIG white pumpkin - look like this - photo below. There are a couple of LARGE cabbages/kales in the containers and one of the things I picked up (another pro-tip) is that the professional 'tipped' the cabbages/kales forward in the planter.  They're NOT planted straight up/down in the container.  Rather, they're planted on an angle - so the head of the cabbage or kale - faces up-and-out.  Very, very, very clever.   Here, below, is a 'profile view' of the galvanized container plantings.  Note how the cabbage is tilted forward or pitched forward.

You just brought home that awesome pot of Mums from Costco (or the pumpkin patch that you went to this past weekend) and put them up by the front door along with some of your pumpkins and gourds.   You're worried about killing them by forgetting to water them - that's very valid.  But, there's another problem you're about to face:  flopping, open-crowned mums.    Some call this 'falling over' and unless you have a number of your mums tucked-in tightly together in a cluster, your mums are going to 'fall over' or flop.   How do you avoid it?  By using a piece of string or twin or wire to tie them up and keep them held together at the top.  I wrote about this pro-tip back in 2017 - when I encouraged everyone to take a piece of string around the foliage and stems of their mums and tie them together .  I've been doing it ever since. This year, we went with a monochromatic nursery container of maroon or dark red mums.  I used a piec...

Like most 'basic' suburban folks who drive a minivan and have a massive Park District 'activity' bill, we normally doll-up our front porch in the fall with Mums.  Costco has those big ones and Nat usually just makes the move for mums on her own.  They're easy to tend to, usually put on a good show and feel quite seasonal for the fall these days, right?  I'm sure that we'll do them soon. But I also called an audible and picked up an annual on a whim:  these Celosia Intenz.  I had a couple of plastic pots laying around (I think from Mums last year!?!) and planted a pair of these in the pots and put them on the front porch.  Also, for those wanting to dig through the archives, I've posted about mums here on the blog over the years.  Last year, I gave a 'pro-tip' to tie your mums up .   Also, I guess our mums from the Fall of 2011 survived the winter and I ended up planting them in the ground in the Spring of 2012 and *like magic*, they d...

Are you like Nat and I and get your mums from Costco?  You know the massive ones in the big plastic pot that is good enough to display on your front porch as-is?  Then, my friend, I have a tip for you:  Get ahead of things by tying up a piece of string or twine about 1/2 up the plant.  That way, they won't splay on you when the buds flower out and get top heavy.