Farewell Chord

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The last flowers of autumn, as well as the very first spring ones, especially please us. ... The last leaves circled with birches, transparently and spaciously in the garden. The first snowball passed, dusted everything around and melted again. And perennial asters still stand in full bloom as a wonderful mistake of nature. Small frosts do not care for them.

But perennial asters bloom not only in the fall. I have two varieties of alpine aster - white and bluish-lilac, they bloom in May-June. These are low rhizome plants with a basal rosette of leaves and with “daisies” up to 6 cm in diameter. I planted a blue aster in a semicircle near the climbing rose Flamentants, whose flexible branches bent arcuate to the ground. A cascade of raspberry rose flowers creates a fountain effect over a blue aster brook. And the white aster gently shaded the pink carpet of the soap-bearing basil-leaf.

I grew these asters from seeds, sowing them in open ground. They sprouted quickly, seedlings developed well, despite the May frost. Bloomed in the second year. Now that they are already large, from time to time I divide them immediately after flowering or in the fall.

Autumn Asters - New English and New Belgian - go under the snow in full bloom. And by the way, they are one of the last honey plants, abundantly secreting nectar.

Tall, almost with my height, New English aster Barz Pink planted at the fence next to the buddha of David. Astra blossomed in September, when the purple buddley buds with their honey aroma still held. It seemed that this couple “pulled” to itself all the butterflies in the area. Astra was very beautiful, thanks to the pink-purple "daisies" with a diameter of 4 cm with a darker center. I planted it in the company of lilac tradescantia and phlox Success with hats of purple with a white star of flowers. It turned out to be a purple island in the middle of autumn gold - lemon and red rudbeck and sunny-faced chrysanthemums.

Aster Sam Beckham blossomed so abundantly that no leaves were visible behind a white cloud of inflorescences. Blue aster Oktoberfest I gave the Canadian goldenrod to my neighbors (also an excellent honey plant). I break off its shoots in the summer in order to shift the flowering to a later date.

I have several varieties of autumn aster shrubbery, they are low, from 25 to 50 cm, but bloom just as profusely and for a long time. This fall, we admired the flowering of raspberry red Janepink Dianablue Audrey. Their compact, densely leafy, highly branched bush-balls are good in a mixed flower garden and a water-colored border.

Late asters can be transplanted with a lump of earth at any time, even during budding and the beginning of flowering, their root system is quickly restored. This is convenient for decorating flower beds that have become empty in the fall after the departure of heat-loving summers.

I propagate autumn asters in the spring by dividing the bush and shoots with shoots of rhizomes. A strong flowering bush develops from a small divide by autumn. But even these asters can be cut, and throughout the summer. The apical cuttings 5-7 cm long are rooted in a shaded greenhouse.

All asters love the sun, although they suffer a slight shade (although there can be problems with flowering). They are undemanding to soils, they do not like only too acidic and stagnant water. They can grow and bloom without any care. But they bloom especially luxuriantly on moderately moist loams enriched with humus and mineral fertilizers. Asters are responsive to feeding, early in spring I bring in full mineral fertilizer, in the phase of budding I feed asters with phosphorus and potassium.

In winter, I cut stalks into secateurs and leave them in place for snow retention. Rhizomes from asters can bulge out of the soil, so I sprinkle a little earth on top, and plants winter under the snow without any problems.

Perennial asters are good on lawns, in compositions with ornamental shrubs, in flower beds of all kinds, composed “tone-on-tone” or multi-colored.

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