Resource

Potty for Pots

Chrysanthemums:

Often referred to as “Mums” for short.
There are many different flower forms such as daisy, aster, pom pom, spider, spoon, quill, and decorative.
Require more that 12 hours of darkness in order to produce flowers. This is called a “Short Day Flowering Response” (“SD” for short).
Due to the need for SD, we have to provide artificial darkness in our greenhouses when we grow mums for our fall show. A blackout cloth covering all the windows provides this darkness for our crop.
Different cultivars lend themselves to different growth habits. Some are grown in small pots and kept short. Others, like Cascades, will trail. Exhibition mums are allowed to grow very tall on a single stem.
A typical pot mum will have the top pinched out 2 weeks after planting to allow for side shoots to form. This is done to increase flower number.

Carnation:

Commonly grown as pot carnations or as cut flowers.
Some varieties are fragrant, some are not.
At the Muttart, we grow about 6400 4” pots for the Multiple Sclerosis Society every year.
The first bud is pinched off to increase flower numbers and encourage new branches.
Carnations can be grown from seed, but to decrease the length of the crop time, tip cuttings are taken and rooted in plug trays. The rooted plugs are then shipped to our greenhouse and we plant them into the final 4” pot.