I see the lovely mums at the local grocery store. I'm in zone 7.

[raccoon]

If I buy some of these lovely mums, will they come back next year?

[WhiteTara]

1. And for many years to come.

I bought a left over last year and planted it. It has turned into a small bush and is getting ready to open all its blooms. Enjoy!

[raccoon]

2. thank you! I'll try it. nt

[Denninmi]

3. Zone 7, probably.

Here in Michigan, mums rarely make it anymore. My understanding of this issue, from talking with Yoder sales people years back, was that the breeders used a lot of semi-tropical genetics in order to achieve the compact, self-branching, quick blooming varieties they now have.

I do know that mums today are a FAR cry from what they were back in the 1960s and 1970s. As a child/teen in the 1970s, I had the most awesome mum garden, the plants were perennial, many different colors, shapes, and forms, blooms from around Labor Day to almost Thanksgiving. They were rock solid hardy, and I loved them. I lost the whole thing one June in a freak flash flood when the township was coming through putting in sewers and had destroyed the normal drainage patterns -- they literally washed away somewhere, and the few that didn't wash away ended up buried in about a foot of clay muck.

I don't even bother anymore with mums, they so rarely make it.

[Retrograde]

4. My sister's had good luck in zone 6

She's had her mums for the three years she's lived at her current place. Since she's near Lake Erie her weather may be a little milder, and she has them in a protected location near the house

[BlueToTheBone]

5. oh yes. I just planted a couple more.

The one I planted last year was so lovely this. Cut off the dead tops, plant it, water deeply and watch next fall!

[Po_d Mainiac]

6. I hit a couple local graveyards, and the garbage barrel were full of mums

They all looked deader than dead. We've had mid teens for lows.

Put 23 of them in the basement under a fluorescent light, and they are all are busting out new growth.

I wooda been happy with just getting the potting soil...