A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Plants and Flowers Forum Plant Propagation Dividing Mums

I want to divide my mums this year. Can someone help me out with all of the details?

How big should each division be?

Do I wait until all the blooms are done?

Do I dig up the entire plant and then divide it?

How long can I wait before I do this?

My oldest mum is brown on the bottom can I still divide it or is it a goner?

Here is a beginning, Tammy.
http://www.thegardenhelper.com/transchrysanth.htm
And from there you can navigate to more pages that may answer your other questions.
Brown on the bottom but still green on the top? It is probably still living. If any of the stems show green when they are cut or broken, it is probably still living. Mums are also very easy to start from cuttings for blooms next year.

great info thankyou for finding it. Would you believe i tried searching and didn't find a thing before I posted.

Did you type mums or chrysanthemums, Tammy? I just used the whole name and that is what came up.

nope i used the short form of the name. My spelling isn't all that good on the long form.

I really appreciate you finding it for me. Especially the cutting information. I did not know that at all. I'm going to try it with the one that is woody on the bottom. That way if it doesn't come back I can still have that color.

An interesting side bar on this subject. I divided the mums and they are doing great. During the process one single stem with root got separated. Well I went ahead and planted it anyway. It is twice the size of the rest of the plants. Bigger leaves, thicker stem, tall. I'm waiting to see the size of the blooms compared to the clumps.

Too funny..I had mums before but they never came back the next year. I must try again, they are lovely in the fall. What colors do you have?

I have a burgandy and a golden brown.

From what I understand they are a short lived perennial and they have to be moved to a new place every three years.

I've tried havesting the seeds and even growing them from commercial seeds and never had any luck.

I really cannot speak for the newer varieties, but I had mums on the North side of my house (about 25-30 feet) and we had them return every year (around 20 yrs or so of them) Until DH decided to mow them down weekly one summer.
I had about 4 feet of the rust colored & the rest was light purple.
I trimmed them back every year until July 1. Then I let them alone to bud & bloom. It kept them standing straight & not so tall

Here is an update on the mutant mum. Well it got about 4 feet tall, the flower is yellow rather than burgandy. Also the flower is much larger around and more like a daisy than the regular mum that it came from. I really like it and I plan to keep it around although I will move if from it's current position in the garden.

You could divide it to spread even further...

This year it is only one stalk. If it grows like it's parent I will in year 3.

Yellows, oranges and reds are the color for my foundation and sidewalk flowerbeds.