Be sure to keep your Mum watered. This will keep it looking fresh.
As your buds turn into flowers and the flowers eventually start to look old and a bit wilted it’s time to make some choices.
you have two choices. Both are good and will work.
#1 Trim back the blooms little by little as they look spent. A small pair of clippers or scissors will do. Go down about an inch or so. This will allow new branches and new buds to form.
#2 Less work. Wait until all of the flowers are ugly and beginning to dry. Cut them all off at once. Again, just go down an inch or two. A good pair of shears of clippers helps.
Don’t worry too much, just give your plant a good trim.
The image you see is one of Weidner’s 2017 crop just beginning to bloom. Note from Evelyn There are lots of U tubes of cutting back your Mum but I promise I will do one too as soon as I have a Mum that has bloomed out all its blooms.
Feed your Mum when you cut it back or every couple of weeks if you are following #1. This is important. Your plant needs to keep up its supply of nutrients to keep on growing.
Remember that Mums are “daylength” influenced. They set blooms when the nights are getting longer than the days. If you have your Mum indoors and turn the lights on at night your Mum thinks it is still summer. If you want your Mum to re-bloom be sure to put it outside where it can get those fall night time dark hours.
Learning hint. When we talk about hours of dark we are not talking about shade versus sun. Dark means black like at night. Light means daylight. Mums naturally bloom in the fall.
After you have gotten all the blooms out of your Mum you can throw it away without guilt or you can cut it back even more and plant it in the ground in a sunny spot. They are perennial and can grow and bloom year after year. Most of us just buy a new one for the next year
Good Gardening by Evelyn