If your mums that have split wide open, now is the perfect time to divide them up. A lot of times mums are notorious for doing that after they get pretty big, and that’s usually a good indication to divide them. You can just dig up the plant, take like a sharp spade or a shovel and just go right down the center, and then now you have two mums. A lot of times we’ll spade all the way around the plant, pop it up out of the ground, and then do the divide. Sometimes you can see natural breaks in the plant, and you want to follow that natural break, and then you’re going to want to replant a portion of that mum probably in that same area, but you can use the other parts of the mum at other places around the house.

If you want to transplant daffodils, it is best to wait a little bit until they start to go a little bit dormant. You want to wait for the leaves and to start turning brown. That’s usually more towards the end of May or so, because you do want to get them before they don’t go completely dormant, because you can miss them unless you put a marker where they are. Something my grandma used to do, she would fold the top half of the plant over and then tie it off with a piece of twine. That way you can watch when it turns brown, and you know exactly where the plants are to go dig them up later.

As you dig them up, sometimes the spades are going to nick them or catch the bulb as you’re digging them up. It’s not a perfect science, and so some of those bulbs are naturally going to be eliminated when you dig them up anyways. If you’re not getting the flowers you used to get, put some bulb tone in. There’s probably a lack of phosphorus in the soil because they do tend to deplete over the years as they’re blooming, so fertilize them when you put them back into the ground with a slow release. Bulb tone is a really good one. And bone meal, that’s the other one. Bulb tone or bone meal. That will help produce more flowers for next year. Dividing does help that, too, because after a while, they almost need to be simulated again.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).