Mid-Atlantic Gardening: Falland Cleaning up Your Garden...What are YOU doing??, 1 by plantmover

plantmover wrote:
Done...not a chance! I will also need to get those granules so I can bring the plants in.

Your mums are beautiful - they add marvelous pops of color. Here's what I stumbled onto concerning mums. One year I lazily stuck the pots along the side of house after they were finished flowering. I didn't do anything with the pots come spring thinking the mums were dead; and since I didn't need the terra cotta pots, I basically just ignored them - a lot. The pots infrequently got watered, so I was surprised when new growth appeared. I pinched them back as needed and tried to be a little more conscientious about watering. Once the intense summer heat had passed, I moved them to a position of morning sun. Come the end of Sept, they were ready to go back on the porch steps.

I've overwintered mums that way since then. Here's a pic of one from November of last year. That one had been overwintered at least twice. I just put this years' plants on the steps yesterday. After a few years, they wane and die off. They're not as fabulous as the ones in your photo, Gita, but then I don't do anything to help them look their best either. This year I might try giving them a bit more TLC just to see what happens.