>> "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.

♪ ♪ 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.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ 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.

♪ ♪ 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.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ 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.

♪ ♪ ♪ Bevel the edges of the flower foam.

♪ ♪ I cut the pompon blooms short and will cover the center of this arrangement completely with flowers.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Let's fill in the wreath frame with a variety of chrysanthemums in different shapes and sizes.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ 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.

♪