Garden Pic Wednesday: White Mums & Dusty Miller

Today was mowing day. Also I had to pick up a bunch of clutter from a blustery thunderstorm a couple days ago. It kicked up a wind that pummeled the roof and sides of the house with green pine cones, like little missiles.  Bang. Bang. Thud. Plus threw a bunch of dead branches on the ground.

Another thunderstorm will arrive in about an hour. It might undo my clean-up!

Today's Garden Pic is one from early spring this year, back when the chrysanthemums I have planted along the front walk under the kitchen bay window were blooming.

I have multiple colors, but the white mini-mums next to the Dusty Miller was especially eye-catching.

The two together have almost a Christmasy look.

Here in Florida, mums can bloom twice a year.
I cut them back short after they start turning brown in the summer heat and they come back from the root, then bloom again late in the fall.
I'm thinking it will take a good fertilizing in late fall and early spring to get the best out of them.

Mums can be perennial, (winter in cold areas can kills them), spread by root underground and turn into clusters individual blooming stems.

The Dusty Miller is great here in the South because it lives through the most bitter cold and continues to give my garden some color in the dead of winter when everything else is gone.  

Sometimes I cut a whole vase of it for a table arrangement in winter.

It roots easily in water; sometimes I can stick a stem straight into the ground and it will take. Though, that doesn't always work.

I'm still figuring out how to best prune it. I think it's the previous years growth that flowers, then once it's done flowering, then old stems can be trimmed back and any new growth should be left alone.

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That's it for today! Stop back tomorrow for Mama Kat!

It will be a fun family travel memory!