Have fun.

My approach this year is buying small size plants of known hardy mum varieties in spring and giving them an opportunity to establish themselves before next winter.

Eric if you plant them in swptember and dont let them dry out they shouild do fine! All of mine came up this year:)

I've long since given up hoping for the potted mums to overwinter in the ground. But they do sometimes overwinter in the big pots we transplant them into and store in the garage for the winter. Last year a large mum was growing strongly by the time we moved the big pots out of the garage in the spring. So I left it in the pot, gave it some slow release fertilizer and clipped it back in mid-May, early June, and early July to keep it bushy, and then let it set buds and bloom in August. It's the orangy-red one in the picture below. As you can see when you compare it with the dark red potted mum bought fresh last summer, my clipping/pinching (and perhaps not enough fertilizer?) didn't produce nearly as bushy a plant as the purchased potted ones. We moved the pots out of the garage last weekend. Two of the mums are still alive but I'm going to throw them out this year. I've got an order in for the Mammoth mums and I have an old hardy white one that we like so I'm going to stick to the hardy types now and not bother with potted ones other than perhaps as throw-away temporary fall color until I see how the Mammoth ones perform here.

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