Growing Gardens

with Julia Hancock

Aster La Vista

If you enjoy growing and arranging flowers in a vase you should always find room for a few asters in your garden. There are two types: annuals and perennials.

Annual varieties are known as China asters and are showier than their perennial counterparts. They bloom in late summer and autumn at a time when there are often gaps in the flower garden and the fact that they come in such a wide range of colours makes them very useful fillers.

As with other members of the daisy family, annual aster flowers are composed of many long, slender petals radiating from a central disc of bright yellow. They come in single, double or quilled forms where the petals are rolled inwards and range in diameter size from 6 to 12cm.

Popular cultivars include 'Giant Crego' which branches from the base and reaches a height of 60cm producing flowers in red, pink, blue, purple and white with unusual inward curling central petals. The 'Sunshine' strain produces smaller plants (to 50cm) with smaller flowers featuring highly decorative quilled florets. Smaller still, 'Dwarf Colour Carpet' is ideal to grow in pots as it reaches a mere 20cm in height and while its flowers are smaller than other hybrids, the plants produce more of them.

Once you have picked the blooms don't expect more to be produced – annual asters are a one-crop wonder.

Perennial asters are most familiar as Michaelmas or Easter daisies, and again they flower in late summer and autumn. These types grow in spreading clumps and throw up stems up to 1m tall, tipped with pink, mauve or white daisy flowers. Perennial asters are also useful for vase arrangements, but are less flamboyant so are better for fill than feature. To their advantage, they are very easy to propagate by simply dividing up a clump in autumn and either transplanting or potting on for planting the following spring.

Lismore Garden Club News

The raffle results are: 1st prize-Trip to Brisbane-Lionel Frame (Casino). 2nd prize-Hand Crocheted Rug-R & N Burns (Goonellabah). For information on the Club, phone Mary on 6621 5293. No doubt the rain has been a great blessing and previously brown lawns are greening up. Flower and vegies gardens have sprung into full growth that can only happen with natural rainfall as compared to hose watering. And all this happening in what is traditionally our driest month. The only negative to gardeners is the problem that rain presents for mango's not setting fruit. Wet conditions at flowering time usually allow a fungus to kill the flower or embryo fruit. Your nursery can recommend a fungicide.

What to Plant Now

Flowers – Alyssum, Aster, Balsam, Candytuft, Celosia, Delphinium, Marigold, Lobelia, Nasturtium, Petunia, Phlox, Portulaca, Salvia, Sunflower, Zinna.
Vegies – Bean, Capsicum, Corn, Cucumber, Herbs, Eggplant, Lettuce, Radish, Tomato, Pumpkin, Squash, Melon.

Gardening Tip

Citrus bugs are a problem at present. The best method of eradication is to empty the dust from you vacuum cleaner, then suck up all the Citrus bugs and empty them into a bucket of hot water.

Happy Gardening
Ron Burns