Anyone Good at Gardening?

Take heart darling. My first attempt to plant roses 10 years ago resulted in nothing but dead sticks coming out of the ground that my husband still teases me about. Now I have a yard full of flowers. Are the mums completely dead, or just the flowers? If it's just the flowers, did you buy them in full bloom? If so, they are just ending their bloom cycle. They'll fade and come back next year, fuller than ever. It's best to buy mums with only buds that are ready to open. They last longer that way. When they do come back next year, by May you should start pinching the tips back. This will prevent them from blooming too early and produce more branch ends for more blooms in the fall! Mulch them well through the winter and water well through the fall to get them established and they should do great. Water about twice/week, when the ground is dry to about 3-4 inches down. We've had a lot of rain, so be careful not to overwater. Good luck! And check out www.savvygardener.com. She's a blogger in KC who puts out a weekly newsletter with great gardening tips!

PS I've never had any luck with petuni

I have had good luck with the following method, and I hope it works for you. I start out with 2 items, in addition to the plants, of course! Miracle Grow Potting Soil is the first, and a bag of bone meal is the second. Both can be found at Lowe's, Home Depot, The Grass Pad, etc. Dig your hole and set aside the dirt from the hole. Make your hole a little deeper than what you'll need. Add some of the Miracle Grow Potting Soil to give your plant a rich bed for roots to set into. Take a small handful of the bone meal and sprinkle it into the hole, on top of the Miracle Grow.

Gentle press the sides of the plant's container to release the plant and roots. "Tickle" the roots to loosen them up, then lower the plant into the hole. Fill in around the plant with the dirt you saved from making the hole. Pack it firmly, but don't press it down as hard as you can. Give the plant a fair drink.

When you do water, try to do it early in the day, never in the evening, which can cause disease to set into the leaves and blooms.

Good luck to you, and whatever you do, keep trying!

I used to struggle keeping plnts alive as well.....now I am a green thumb. Well to be honest, it was anything my husband planted that would die, and I struggled to keep them alive. Until I realized that whenI plant things in the ground, I also put in fetilizer (miracle grow) and he didn't. Sometimes pending on what your planting the soil may be missing key nutrients to feed the plant and it can die....kind of like sufficating I guess. You can take a soil sample into almost any nursery and they can test it for you and tell you what you are missing and what you should feed your plants. My garden whas huge and flurishing this past year, and we just built a new house and it was very much deprived of some key nutrients. So I added in some miracle grow and wah-la! I had the flowers of envy on our street.

I'm not great at this either, but Petunias are usually fairly simple. This was a bad summer for flowers if you weren't on top of them, though. The main thing I found was to water the flowers at least once a day & make certain it's before the sun comes up of after it goes down. If not the water on the leaves / flowers attracts the sun & it fries them. Mums I don't know too much about...Sorry. Hopefully you can at least have better Petunias next year ;)

Wow!
Mums are hardy plants.
They don't care about the acidity of soil and prefer full sun. When the mums died...what did the leaves look like?

I can ask my fellow gardening club members if they have any tips/advice on mums...but dang...i'm rough with my mums and they come back full and hardy every year.

My only piece of advice is to check the soil and water mums every 2-3 days at the beginning. Mums are drought resistent.

First of all it does depend on what kind of soil you planted them in and then the weather I don't know that I would water a mum in the ground every other day that seems like way to much you need to check the ground for moisture before watering you want the soil to be somewhat dry before watering again. I have a horticulture degree so if you want to email me we can figure out what might be going wrong. Good Luck

I don't have a green thumb either :(
No advice but just wanted to say you aren't alone!

I planted a garden a couple years ago only for nothing to even sprout!! I followed the directions but I think it's because I didn't buy soil, I just tried planting directly into missouri backyard soil. I guess it wasn't good soil or something. I don't know