Mums the After-Festival Word at the Nixon Library : Gardening: Chrysanthemums refused to cooperate for Japanese celebration, but they’re in all their bloom and glory now, awaiting visitors.
Manipulating chrysanthemums to spill from pots in a torrent of continuous blossoms is a uniquely Japanese form of plant cultivation. So unless you’ve been to the Orient in the fall and visited a chrysanthemum festival, you may never have seen mums in this glorious form before.
Now’s your chance. The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda celebrated autumn with a Japanese-style Chrysanthemum Festival recently, and it brought in truckloads of mums for the occasion, including many in the celebrated cascading style. Unfortunately for the library, unseasonably warm weather put the cascading mums--the supposed stars of the event--a little behind schedule. Most stubbornly refused to open their buds, even for a celebration in their honor.
The festival is over, but the chrysanthemums remain on display at the Nixon library--both inside the building and on the grounds--and they are just now coming into their full glory. They should continue to be resplendent through November.
Your mental picture of chrysanthemums may be of those Sumo wrestler-sized blooms adorning the chests of high school homecoming queens the day of the big game. Cascading chrysanthemums, however, are something quite different.
Their flowers are invariably small and simple in shape. Their glory comes not from their huge size or complex form but from their sheer number. There seems to be a million blossoms per plant.
Here’s how to duplicate that prodigious fluorescence, according to Philip Ishizu, owner of Sunnyslope Gardens in San Gabriel, the vendor who supplied the flowers for the Nixon library’s celebration.
Start with a cutting from a naturally leggy variety of chrysanthemum especially bred for flexible stems, he advises. When the plant gets to be about 12 inches high, insert a 12-gauge wire into the potting soil close to the plant’s stem and begin bending the wire to a 45-degree angle at a point about 6 inches above the soil surface. Then pull the plant down to the wire and fasten it with twine or twist-its. Continue anchoring the plant to the wire as it grows.
“The idea is to develop as long a leader as you can,” Ishizu says. (Fully cultivated plants leaving his nursery have leaders 3 to 4 feet long, with all but the lower few inches of the stem in full flower.)
Pinch off all lateral and sublateral growth from the leader to fill it out until the plant is ready to set buds. Normally that would be August, Ishizu says. “But you can push them a little to get more flowers from the plants,” he says. “We normally call Labor Day ‘the last pinch.’ ”
When a cascading chrysanthemum fills out sufficiently, its weight bends its supporting wire into a graceful, downward-curving arc.
To get maximum performance out of a plant, re-pot it every four to five weeks. “Plants tend to spread their roots to the rim of whatever they’re planted in,” Ishizu says. “You want the plant to develop central root mass instead. That will make it stronger so that it can support a larger cascade.”
Use rich potting soil each time. And feed the plant frequently with a good commercial fertilizer.
Ideally, you would also place the plant facing north until it sets buds, and then turn it south when the buds begin to open. This maximizes the amount of sun bathing the plant, Ishizu says. Even though chrysanthemums need long nights (9 1/2 hours of daily darkness) in order to put out blooms, they love the sun when they’re awake, he says.
Once its blossoms open, set the plant in any sunny location where you can appreciate its flowing shape. An elevated position is ideal.
There’s really nothing esoteric about creating cascading chrysanthemums, Ishizu insists; anyone can do it.
Jan Zalba, a San Clemente gardener and gardening instructor at South Coast Botanical Gardens, has tried it and agrees. With a caveat.
“It takes commitment,” she warns. “This is a long process (April through September, from cutting to bloom). You have to be out there examining the plant all the time. You can’t go off on a two-week vacation. The chrysanthemum will be all woody when you get back, you’ll try to force it into shape, and it will break off. And there goes all your work.”
If you succeed, you’ll have something wonderful, however, she says. “It will be the focal point of your patio.”
If creating a cascade sounds too daunting, try a pyramid instead. The same cultivars used for cascades can also be trained up a stake like a vine--a much more forgiving process.
Or try a chrysanthemum tree. For this shape, says Ishizu, start with varieties with a natural tendency to form wood. Then prune off all branches on the first six inches or so of the trunk, and continue to nip off the tip of remaining branches after every fourth or fifth leaf axil until “last pinch” time.
The plant gets rounder exponentially with each pinch--from 4 to 16 branches, to 64, 256, 1024, 4906, etc. And at the end of each branch, at the end of the season, there will be a flower.
It’s this quality of producing flowers at all its terminals that enables nurseries--and garden hobbyists--to manipulate chrysanthemums into such gorgeous specimens, Ishizu says. “All the flowers bloom at the same time. That’s why mums are so showy.”
Although it’s too late to create a cascade for yourself this year, it’s not too early to start planning next year’s. First obtain a catalogue from a grower specializing in the chrysanthemum varieties you’ll need. Sunnyslope Gardens is the only local supplier. Then sit back and wait for your cuttings to arrive.
And while your waiting, take a trip to the Nixon Library where cascading, pyramid-style and tree-form chrysanthemums cultivated by a master are on display. These may not be the results you’ll achieve your first year, but this is what you’ll be striving for.
While you’re there, visit the rest of the garden. The terraced section with Patricia Nixon’s favorite roses was looking particularly splendid a week ago. Stop to sniff the big blooms on the unusual Thevetia (yellow oleander) trees at the entrance too. They not only look like lilies, they smell as sweet.
Another option is visiting Roger’s Gardens, the only nursery in Orange County that carries cascading chrysanthemums. The plants’ $19.99 price tag for a 5-gallon pot doesn’t seem so formidable once you understand the labor that went into creating them. If you calculate the cost per blossom, per blooming day, for the four- to six-week period the plants put on a show, you might even call them bargains.
For information about growing specialty chrysanthemums, request Sunnyslope Gardens’ catalogue. Their address is 8638 Huntington Drive, San Gabriel, Calif. 91775. (818) 287-4071.
Owner Philip Ishizu also recommends “The Beginner’s Handbook” published by the National Chrysanthemum Society. It’s free with first year’s dues ($8.50). Write NCS, 10107 Homar Pond Drive, Fairfax Station, Va. 22039.
