I like to refer to August as the limbo month of the garden center world. Everyone is in the midst of summer and flowers have grown into beautiful full plants. At this point everything kind of sits in limbo and we get the pleasure of watching one season end and another begin taking place in front of our eyes.
Mums are our main focal point this time of the year, and they like A LOT of water. The mums are not quite ready to go but you can definitely start seeing the plant take shape. On these hot days they take bucket fulls, it is incredible how much water mums need. It is important that we don’t let them dry out and make sure they are well watered each and every day. Unfortunately the days are getting shorter and shorter but for mums that is important. They are a short day crop, which means, in order for them to flower they need only about 8 hours of sunlight and hopefully 16 hours of darkness. What is fascinating about their photo period is that the time spent in the dark is much more important to the plant than when it is the light, this is the time where the plants generate hormones for flowering. So even though we may feel in limbo this time of the year, the plants are just getting started and we gotta keep moving!
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