How to Pinch Mums

Mums are a wonderful choice to add to any home or garden. The available species of mums is nearly endless and the array of colors and styles of mums can be mesmerizing. Once you start growing mums, you may find yourself wanting more of them. You can easily care for them and enjoy beautiful blooms for months at a time. One very important maintenance requirement for mums is pinching. In order for your mums to produce better blooms and become a solid, well-shaped plant, you must know how to pinch mums. The following steps will detail this process.

Instructions

1. Set your schedule for the first pinch. Mums require more than one pinching, but the first one must be planned for. Select a date in early spring to start checking your mums, once you have fully trimmed them back. It does matter where you live (what zone you are in) as to the best time to do this. Begin monitoring mums within a week of their spring pruning, so you will be sure to catch them in time. What you are looking for is new growth. Watch for these shoots to reach around four inches in length on small mum species. If you have taller species of mums, you may wait until they are around seven inches in length.

2. Pinch the mums correctly to encourage a thicker plant and more flowers. Remove the top one to two inches of new growth by holding the stem in between your forefinger and your thumb and then pinch it with your thumbnail. This could be just below a set of leaves, but it does not have to be. You will soon see new growth just above this spot.

3. Repeat the process. You will have to repeat Step 2 on the mums around every four weeks or as you see more than three inches of additional fresh growth on them.

4. Know when to stop pinching the mums. Again, it matters your growing zone, but it a good idea to not pinch mums any more after the first week of July in cool regions and near the end of the month in warm ones.

Tips & Warnings

• Some climates will only require you to pinch mums twice a season, but others may need more. Mums vary from beginning growing seasons from March in warmer zones that will be ready to be pinched in early May; to cooler zoned mums that will most likely not need their first pinch until the end of May.