
Met P. ointers 
TEMPERATURE 
This crop will make its most growth during cool weather. During the summer, syringing overhead plus 
a light shade on the glass will help keep the plants cool. 
Blindness 
Blindness may be a combination of late planting, late pinching, too much moisture, too rich a soil 
and too low a temperature at bud initiation. It has been shown that if chrysanthemums are grown in 
temperatures much below 50° at the time of bud initiation the plants will remain vegetative and will 
not form flower buds. Blindness is usually associated with those varieties which flower the ‘latter part 
of November or later. Not all varieties initiate buds at the same date. The late flowering varieties 
may not set bud until October. 
To overcome blind growth keep a night temperature of 55 - 60° from September 15 on until the buds 
are visible. Likewise run the soil moisture low and do not feed during this period. After the buds are 
visible it is safe to reduce the temperature to 50°. 
When growing chrysanthemums "The Year Around" it is very important to maintain a temperature 
of 60° during the period of bud formation or blindness and poor budding will result. 
SHIPPING FLOWERS 
Packing of cut flowers should be carefully studied. The most common error is over-crowding in the 
shipping boxes. Not securely fastening the blooms in the box will cause bruising of the petals. Cleat- 
ing or sewing the stems to the box is essential. Cushion the blooms by placing enough padded 
paper on the bottom of the corrugated box and between the layers of blooms. Wrap the pompons 
with a loose wrapper. The wrapping poper could have the name of the grower printed on it. 
Long distance shipments carry better if the cut flowers are packed dry. Reduction of temperature 
is accomplished by precooling the packed cut flowers. 
CULTURED STOCK 
Through the development of science your chrysanthemum cuttings have all been grown from stock 
that has been cultured to determine the presence or absence of the fungus that causes Verticillium 
Wilt or more commonly referred to as Seidewitz Disease. The culturing of cutting is to place bits 
of the stem of a cutting into the gelatine-like agar medium which is used for growing fungi. If the 
tissue is not infected, no growth of Verticillium develops. As each cutting is cultured it is placed in 
sterile propagating benches spaced six inches each way. After 10 days of incubating the agar plates 
one can determine if the wilt organism is present in the tissue. All the cuttings that show the pres- 
ence of Verticillium are discarded and only those that show a negative reading are saved and grown 
into stock plants. This clean stock must be grown under sterile conditions at all times as cuttings can 
be easily contaminated when planted into soil that has the Verticillium organism present. 
Verticillium wilt is one of the worst diseases of the Chrysanthemum. If you obtain cuttings propagated 
from cultured stock and provided you grow your plants in clean soil this disease should not be of 
any trouble to you. 

Paper Mulch on Mums Before Planting Cross Supports Held in Place by Patent Clothespins 
