Potted Plants Can Be Recycled in a Pinch : Restore flowers to their former glory by cutting back stems and creating artificial darkness.

After the blooms fade on a potted mum, the plant can be recycled to its former glory.

Start by cutting back the stems halfway once all the flowers have faded, said specialist Ed Higgins.

“Then the challenge is to see how close you can come to matching the original flowers produced by a professional grower. That means pinching back once or twice whenever new shoots reach four to five inches to create bushier plants with more blooms.”

It also means creating artificial darkness.

Higgins suggests covering the plants with a cardboard box or putting them in a closet for 12-13 hours each night. Temperatures should range from 60 to 72 degrees. Higher ones make the plants tall and weak, and cooler ones are likely to retard flower development.

During the day, keep the potted mums in a sunny location.

The techniques offered by Higgins, of the mum-producing giant Yoder Bros. of Barberton, Ohio, are effective year-round.

“Water as needed to prevent wilting and fertilize with a water-soluble fertilizer at the rate recommended for flowering potted plants,” he said.

He estimates a potted mum will be full of buds and almost ready to flower within seven to eight weeks of being subjected to artificial darkness.

In theory, any mum can be forced to flower on any target date. Such controlled flowering is the underlying reason why mums are such a major crop for the floral industry.

For hundreds of years, mums were known as a “short day” crop, meaning they set buds and flowered after days shortened in the fall. That’s still true in nature. But in the 1930s, researchers discovered that mums could be made to flower 52 weeks a year by regulating the light they received.

Such tricking of the growing cycle is done with many other plants, notably poinsettias.

So how difficult is it with mums?

“Reflowering your pot mums to look as if they were grown by a professional can be difficult, even for a person with a green thumb,” Higgins said.

But it’s not that difficult to simply produce an acceptable flowering plant for the home.

Divide and repot the plants as needed.

Higgins recommends dividing garden mums every other year when the new growth is about four inches high. He suggests discarding the old center portion of the root mass and planting the young offshoots 18 to 24 inches apart. Water slowly and thoroughly. New shoots will need pinching several times to promote bloom and compact growth.

With all types of mums, good drainage is a must. They dislike wet feet.

Chrysanthemum means “golden flower” in Greek, and yellow remains the top-selling color.