Use these tips to care for mums indoors as dormant plants or as houseplants.
If you provide the right conditions, you’re free to even grow mums as houseplants.
This guide explains how to achieve all of these goals successfully.
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How Long Can Mums Live Indoors?
The plants will be fine and won’t need any special treatment for a day or two.
If you dont intend to overwinter them, you wont need to provide additional fertilizer or repot them.
Keeping mums indoors longer term over the winter is possible but requires more care.
Keeping them alive and actively growing also makes iteasy to take cuttingsto start new plants.
Garden Mums
The mums we buy in autumn for fall decorations are usually garden mums.
While they are perennials and hardy inUSDA Zones 5-9, they often wont survive the winter if planted outdoors.
They are less hardy and are usually kept as indoor plantslike poinsettias.
They bloom for a bit and are thenadded to the compost pile.
However, they, too, can be kept alive and coaxed to rebloom with standard houseplant care.
Mums are phototropic bloomers, meaning they flower in respond to the length of daylight.
Separating these and providing each with its own pot gives them room to expand their roots and grow strong.
Garden mums are often rootbound in the plastic nursery pots theyre purchased in.
Dont use garden soil when repotting mums.
Instead, use a good-quality potting mix that provides good drainage.
Monitoring soil moisture levels is critical in keeping mums alive over winter.
Check the soil with your finger andwater when it feels dry an inch down.
If you cant get your finger into the soil, repot the plant.
Caring for Dormant Mums
Garden mum foliage begins to die back with a few frosts.
Dormant mums dont need much water but dont let the soil completely dry out.
Keep it slightly damp, and check it every few weeks.
Bring dormant mums out of darkness and start waking them up several weeks before yourlast frost in spring.
Proper watering, timed lighting, fertilizing, and pinching all play a role.
If you want to keep your mum indoors permanently,it needs a grow light.
Remember, plants use light as energy to make food.
Fertilize When Needed
Fertilizing potted mums is necessary.
When thats gone, theyre stuck.
This means removing a little of the growing tips with your fingers.
Two or three rounds of pinching over the spring and summer is sufficient.
Stop pinching around the 4th of July and let the plant settle into making blooms.
