The Hort Report: Time to clean vegetable plants, and how to plant your mums in fall

The cooler temperatures are here to stay, and we’re not getting much rain as we get into the middle of October. But with watering, I still am getting vegetables from our garden and the community garden at the Father Buhman Center. The fall garden in raised beds will be ready in a few days. 

As vegetables finish producing, you need to clean them up. Put the vegetable plants in a compost pile to start decomposing. If they diseased or have insects living in them, pile them up and burn the vegetable plants.

Make sure you are making a map of where everything was planted this year so you have a place to start on where to plant your vegetables next year. Rotate them to a different place in the garden or raised bed. Decide if you need to plant more or less of the vegetables you planted. This helps allow you to get your vegetable seeds lined up for next year.

I have people asking how to get their mums to survive the winter. Make sure you have garden/hardy mums. These mums are hardy in zones 4-9. They will get established by growing stolons underground, thus coming back the following year. Florist mums can’t survive in zones 4-9.

The best time to plant hardy/garden mums in the ground is in the spring. This will allow them plenty of time to get their root system growing. People do like to plant mums they get in the fall. 

Here are a few things you can do to help your mums survive winter if you want to plant your new mums this fall. Get them in the ground as soon as possible.  

Mums grow best where they get six or more hours of full sunlight. Plant the mums in well-drained soil. Mums can’t handle wet soggy soils. Their roots need to grow fast. A good mix of compost, sand and silt is the best type of soil to plant in. 

Before planting mums, soak the mum root ball in a bucket of water for at least eight to 10 hours. Dig a hole bigger than the root ball. After you get the soil mix in around the root ball, put water on it. Let the soil soak in around roots, then add more soil mix and water it again. This helps get the root ball surrounded by soil.    

After watering, use a liquid fertilizer high in phosphorus so the roots grow faster. Ferti-Lome Blooming and Rooting Fertilizer is best for this. I plan on using this on several of my perennial vegetables in the next few days. Watering first helps hold the liquid fertilizer in the soil around the roots better.

Water mums two or three times a week, keeping the soil moist around the roots so there are no air pockets for cold air to get into. 

Put several inches of mulch on the soil where you planted the mum. This helps protect the mum’s root ball during a hard, cold winter. Water the mulch, allowing the mulch to get into the soil mix.

Use chopped leaves, grass clipping, wood chips or straw as mulch. Make sure to spread it out wider than the area around your mum. This way, you make sure to keep cold air from getting into the soil around the roots. After the first freeze, add more mulch for more protection. Doing these things should help your mums survive the winter. 

I have held mums over in pots during the winter, planting them in the spring. I make sure I have plenty of soil in the pot and water them well, keeping them on the back porch so they don’t freeze. I prune them once the flowers dry.

Thanks for all your questions. I appreciate them. Call me at 573-588-2040. Visit me at Shelby County Implement in Shelbina, Mo. Email me at sci63468@hotmail.com or visit me on Facebook at Greenwell’s Greenhouse Group. You can simply ask me whenever you see me.

Enjoy the fall weather.

Pat Greenwell is the owner of Shelby County Implement in Shelbina, Mo. He was a high school agriculture teacher for 11 years. He has taught adult vocational agriculture since 1987. He also is a research assistant at the Truman State University Ag Department Farm.