Some of our fall flowers are quite beautiful but the aster is one of the prettiest and it makes our fall gardens stand out. These flowers are very remeniscent of spring and early summer. There classified as a perennial and are very easy to grow.   

It is best to check with your local home and garden center or garden nursery for the hardiest plants in your region. You need to remeber that asters need plenty of space, a lot of sun and moist soil. If you plant your asters in full sun you will see how well they will thrive, most of them like soaking up the sun as much as possible. If you add compost to the soil it will become richer and it will also act as a type of mulch for the plants.   

The rapid growth period for the aster is usually at the end of summer. This is the time they will want more water every week so they will not dry out. They also like to have a lot of room so that the air around them moves freely. Asters are basically pest free but will sometimes end up with a powdery mildew which is caused by water being left on the leaves or going without water for too long a period of time. Overcrowding can sometimes cause this to happen.

That nice compact pot of asters you bought last year and planted in the garden this year probably looks like an open wiggly mess of a plant. Do not be discouraged, when you bought them from the nursery they were probably sprayed with a minimizer spray so they would stay compact in their container and would not out grow it. Once you put them in the flower garden they found more room to grow and that is why they look the way they do. If you want your aster plant to be compact, all you need to do is pinch back the tips of every stem. This will force branching out on all sides of the plant much easier. At the end of spring you can pinch about every 2 weeks to get a bushier plant. Cutting back aster will delay the blooms by approximately a week or two. This just means the blooms will last longer into the season.

If your flower bed consists of only asters, pinch the asters in the front of the bed but not in the back. The un-pinched asters in the back section will grow taller and bloom earlier. When they have fnished blooming the ones you pinched in front of the bed will start blooming and will hide the stems in the back. Doing this will give you more blooming asters that will extend your growing season.