>> "J Schwanke's Life in Bloom"
is brought to you by...
Albertsons Companies...
with additional support from the
following...
CalFlowers...
Dollar Tree...
Sunshine Bouquet.
♪
>> Mum's the word today on
"Life in Bloom" --
chrysanthemum, that is.
We'll explore the many shapes,
sizes, and colors of this
durable, long-lasting flower.
We'll learn how they're grown.
I'll show you a fun craft.
And we'll even have a
chrysanthemum cocktail.
Say that three times fast.
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I'm J Schwanke.
Welcome to "Life in Bloom."
"Why don't you get a haircut?
You look like a chrysanthemum."
Chrysanthemums have always been
a big part of my life.
My family started growing them
as a cut flower way back in the
early 1900s.
The chrysanthemum house was an
impressive backdrop for many
family photographs.
This painting was commissioned
by my great-grandfather for my
great-grandmother.
It features chrysanthemums that
were grown in the greenhouse.
Chrysanthemums are long-lasting,
durable flowers.
At the same time, they have
certain challenges when it comes
to growing.
They naturally bloom when days
get shorter and nights are
longer, so we had elaborate
shade cloths that had to be
pulled each day over the top of
the benches to fool the plants
into thinking it was fall.
At the same time, when the days
got too short, we had to light
them to simulate and stimulate
blooming.
Naturally, chrysanthemums
produce many blooms.
But if you want one singular
large bloom on an individual
stem, you need to disbud.
Disbudding the plant means
you're carefully removing the
buds just as soon as they're
visible so that all the strength
goes into one central bud.
And you get what we used to call
a football mum, so called
because we would make homecoming
corsages out of the large
blooms.
Chrysanthemums are composite
flowers, meaning that the flower
is made up of hundreds of petals
that all sprout from the center
of the bloom.
Each individual petal supports
the petals around it.
And unfortunately, if you bump,
ding, or otherwise rough up a
chrysanthemum and knock out a
few petals, the other petals
will soon follow suit.
We used to wax mums by lighting
a candle and dripping wax on the
back side of the calyx, thus
reinforcing the flower before it
was made into a corsage or
placed into a bouquet.
But today, modern companies have
hybridized and created much
stronger flowers.
There's also a fun aspect of the
chrysanthemum -- exploding.
As kids, we would hit a bloom on
the table or bench for fun to
watch it explode.
This didn't make either my
parents or my grandparents very
happy.
But it's an interesting
homecoming football tradition to
burst your corsage when the home
team makes its first touchdown.
And the audience would be
showered in mum petals that
typically were one of the
home-team colors.
Now I'll create an arrangement
reminiscent of my
great-grandmother's painting.
I'm using a shallow container,
so I'll create a gridwork with
clear waterproof tape.
This structure will hold the
flowers in place.
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So you see, there's a lot of
personal history and experience
and lots and lots of love that
goes into my fondness for the
regal chrysanthemum.
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Spray chrysanthemum are also
referred to as daisy
chrysanthemum, buttons, or
pompons.
The name chrysanthemum is
derived from the Ancient Greek
"chrysos," meaning "gold," and
"anthemon," meaning "flower."
Most chrysanthemum species
originate from East Asia.
Chrysanthemums were first
cultivated in China as a
flowering herb as far back as
the 15th century BC.
Chrysanthemums entered American
horticulture in 1798, when
Colonel John Stevens imported a
cultivated variety known as
Dark Purple from England.
Chrysanthemum plants have been
shown to reduce indoor air
pollution by the NASA Clean Air
Study.
The chrysanthemum is also the
flower of November.
♪
I had the pleasure of visiting
one of the few farms in the
United States that still
includes chrysanthemum in the
mix of flowers they grow --
Ocean Breeze International.
The sights and smells of this
visit reminded me of my
childhood, largely spent inside
my family's greenhouses.
>> We have gerbera daisies,
chrysanthemums, plus we grow
about another seven acres of
natural mums, callas, the
colored callas, the miniature
ones, three acres of hydrangeas.
We also have three acres of
Orientals, lilies.
If you add every single stem
that we move out of this
facility, between 30 million to
35 million stems of product is
moved out of these facilities.
>> Wow.
>> And that's a lot of flowers.
>> So, Rene, tell me how we
progress with all these.
>> After the flowers have been
cut, we mow the stubble so we
get nice organic matter back
into the soil again.
Then we rototill it.
We put a steam tarp on there,
what we call pasteurization.
We put -- We cook the soil,
basically, for about four hours.
And to keep it economically
feasible, we started putting on
a blanket on top of that, and
that has basically cut our
energy use in half.
>> Now, you and I -- I love this
today, 'cause we had a good
connection point.
We were talking about the
pasteurization, the smell that
you get when you're cooking the
dirt.
>> That's right, that's right.
>> And you and I, we both like
it.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> And it is.
It's an amazing smell that I
remember as a kid being in the
greenhouses and having that
smell.
>> It's a clean smell.
It's a clean smell.
It's a memory smell.
>> It is, yeah, 'cause there's
nothing else that smells like
it.
>> The chrysanthemum is a time
crop, and that's actually the
good part about it, because you
take roses, for instance, okay,
everybody wants red for
Valentine, and everybody wants
pink for Easter, and everybody
wants yellow for Easter.
Again, you know, we can dictate
what we have for each holiday.
We control our blooming pattern
by saying, okay, we turn the
lights on.
We leave them on for six weeks
in a row at night, and then we
say, okay, lights off, and then
it's guaranteed to have blooms
in seven to nine weeks,
depending what variety we grow.
>> Okay, and you do this
outside, as well.
>> We do this outside, as well.
We do it for about six months
out of the year.
>> And then you cycle through
with the lighting outside.
>> We cycle through.
We can only do that in the
latter part of the year when we
have enough short days.
♪
These are called spray mums,
okay?
We take the center ones out, so
that way we get all the other
ones mature.
>> So, my grandfather used to
tell me that he would -- He
always liked us to get in there
early to get those little buds
off the sides so that that big
China mum would come on there.
>> That's correct, yes.
>> And you're popping this one
out of the center so that the
other shoots come up.
>> Other shoots come up, 'cause
what happens is, what your
grandfather said was -- he's
totally correct.
The younger you get them, the
less growth will go to the side
buds.
>> Oh, so there's more strength.
>> More strength to the center
for the China mums.
But it's the reverse for us.
We're growing spray
chrysanthemums, and we need to
get the center bud out so it
doesn't bloom prematurely while
the rest of the blooms are still
not ripe yet.
>> Okay.
And so that takes us to where we
are over here, then.
>> That's correct, yes.
So we always say, you know,
after disbud, two weeks, we cut
flowers.
>> Wow.
>> So next week Monday, we'll be
cutting flowers here.
>> But we're all talking about
disbuds.
>> Disbuds, yes.
Disbuds are Fuji mums.
They are -- Go ahead.
>> A football mum.
>> A football mum.
>> A China mum.
>> A China mum.
>> A standard mum.
>> Correct.
>> We got a whole bunch of names
for them -- a spider.
We're talking all about the same
thing.
>> All disbuds.
>> All disbuds.
And the other ones are sprays.
>> Are sprays, correct.
>> And a spray is what we also
call a pompon.
>> Correct, yes.
>> Okay.
>> Yes.
>> And so this is where they get
picked.
>> That's correct, yes.
So this is 15 weeks from when
they were planted.
>> Wow.
And so once they're picked, the
cycle starts all over again.
>> All over again.
>> Amazing.
Thanks for sharing that with us.
I appreciate being able to see
it.
>> There you go.
It's my pleasure.
♪
>> I'm sure all of you are
familiar with the smiley face
mum.
We used to make these all the
time back in my store in the
'70s.
But I thought today it would be
fun to update that in a fun
project for kids.
We're gonna create emoticon
mums.
We use black pipe cleaners.
And we can create the eyes just
by rolling those pipe
cleaners...
into a circle.
♪
That makes a period.
We can do the same thing.
We'll roll it.
♪
And that makes a comma.
'Cause remember, emoticons are
based on the symbols from your
keyboard on your phone or
computer.
The next one...
is the letter P.
So we're gonna form that into a
P.
♪
Next, we're gonna apply these to
the mum itself.
This is a rare exception to one
of my stringent rules.
I tell you never, ever to use
hot glue on fresh flowers,
especially when we're dealing
with corsages or boutonnieres.
But today we're attaching the
pipe cleaner to the face of the
mum, and it works best using a
low-temp glue gun.
So we'll start with our P.
We'll glue the glue on the
back...
and place it on the front of the
mum.
♪
♪
So again, remember, semicolon
and then the capital P.
And that makes the tongue-out
symbol.
We can create all sorts of
different emoticons on the mums.
♪
For years, we've turned our
feelings into flowers.
Emoticons actually allow us to
express our emotions through an
icon on the computer.
So combining these two is a
modern way for us to tell a
story or share our emotions
through a flower arrangement.
I created some for you today so
you can have some examples.
The heart, which is the
greater-than sign and the 3.
Of course, we've got sad.
There's surprised.
It can even be angry.
So let's create a little bud
vase that incorporates some of
these emoticons.
♪
It's a great way to combine the
smiley face mum with emoticons.
You might even call them
"emoti-mums."
♪
♪
I had never heard of the
chrysanthemum cocktail, so I had
to investigate.
It turns out it's an
over-century-old cocktail
created in 1916 that was served
on board cruise ships during the
prohibition.
Let's take a look at how this
simple cocktail's made.
This is a relatively simple
recipe, but remember to measure
exactly.
2 ounces of dry vermouth.
1 ounce of Bénédictine.
3 teaspoons of absinthe.
We'll stir the ingredients...
and strain into a chilled coupe
glass.
The recipe calls for a garnish
with an orange twist, but we'll
also add a chrysanthemum.
It's light and herbal with a
sweet ending.
♪
In this bouquet, I'm including a
variety of chrysanthemum called
Magnum that resemble dahlias.
And I'll show you my special
technique to subtly change up
their color.
The mechanic for today's project
is thinking about your index
finger and thumb as a vase.
And all of the flowers will go
into the vase at a 45-degree
angle and on top of the last
flower.
That's gonna give us a perfect
spiral and a perfect mechanic
for a hand-tied bouquet.
I'm changing the color of this
mum to match the color palette
of this bouquet.
I accomplish this using spray
paint in a well-ventilated area.
It's important to keep the
nozzle 10 to 12 inches away from
the flower to prevent freezing
the petals.
I apply several light coats of
paint, front and back, so I have
control over the depth of color.
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I'm creating the base for this
arrangement using a soaked
flower foam wreath, then cutting
and placing soaked flower foam
into the center of the wreath.
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Bevel the edges of the flower
foam.
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I cut the pompon blooms short
and will cover the center of
this arrangement completely with
flowers.
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Let's fill in the wreath frame
with a variety of chrysanthemums
in different shapes and sizes.
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Chrysanthemums have been a
florist staple for many years
due to their obvious positive
attributes -- color, durability,
and long-lasting properties.
So it's been exciting to look at
them through a new lens.
I hope you have a new
appreciation for one of the most
varied family of flowers that
exists.
For "Life in Bloom," I'm
J Schwanke.
Test one, two, three.
>> Are you sure you want to do
this, J?
>> Positive.
Ah, I do my own stunts.
Okay?
We're good?
>> Yep.
>> Come on in!
The water's fine!
♪
>> Find your glasses now.
>> I did.
>> Hate to tell you, you said
water...
>> I know I did.
>> I see them.
They're right by your right
foot.
It's alright.
>> How was it?
I'm fine.
>> Okay, don't worry about it.
>> "J Schwanke's Life in Bloom"
is filmed in Grand Rapids,
Michigan.
>> "J Schwanke's Life in Bloom"
is brought to you by...
Albertsons Companies...
with additional support from the
following...
CalFlowers...
Dollar Tree...
Sunshine Bouquet.
♪
Closed-caption funding provided
by Holland America Flowers.
♪
For everything flowers, recipes,
projects, and more information,
visit ubloom.com.
♪