Asters are the most common and favorite garden flowers. The main thing that attracts gardeners in them is lush, bright and long flowering. Perennials, particularly New Belgian aster, are especially good in this regard. Be that as it may, the annual sowing of seeds and the expectation of how many of them will sprout is somewhat tiring and not to everyone's liking. It’s a matter of proven bushes that can please the eye for many years.
Flower description
New Belgian Astra is a late-flowering plant. Depending on the variety, she begins to decorate the garden in July and ends already in October. Some varieties retain flowers until the first frost. The bushes have smooth, glossy leaves and stems, inflorescences of a very wide color gamut with a mandatory yellow center. Again, depending on which variety you bought: flowers can be small and large enough, up to five centimeters in diameter. Outwardly, they look like lush daisies. The New Belgian Astra is rather low, one and a half meters - this is its limit. But it blooms very abundantly, so that the foliage hides behind the flowers. And she does not stop this process within 35-45 days.
Plants of this family are relatively unpretentious. The New Belgian aster is not out of the general row: planting and care are not troublesome, no complex gardening skills on its plantations will be required. The only thing you should pay attention to when choosing a variety is the flowering time. The latest ones in the middle lane simply do not have time to bloom.
Where and when to plant?
When you plan to take a place for these flowers on the site, look for sunny areas, where there is a lot of light, which the New Belgian aster loves very much. Planting in the shade, and even on too moist ground, will significantly slow down flowering and make it more scarce. In addition, the shoots of the bush will begin to stretch, droop, or even break.
The soil should be neutral, asters agree on slightly acidic, but not alkaline. Seeds can be used both seedlings and seedlings. The main thing is to use them as quickly as possible: in an opened bag they quickly lose their germination capacity. For seedlings they are sown on the day of purchase, in open ground - just before winter. If you sow aster early, when the daylight hours are still short, you will have to arrange illumination for the shoots. New Belgian aster, grown from seeds, blooms a year or two after gaining a permanent residence.
It is purely aesthetically desirable to frame asters with low ornamental plants: the foundations of the “New Belgians” are bare and not very beautiful, they need camouflage.
Astra New Belgian: care
Nothing supernatural is needed. In the presence of periodic rains, the New Belgian Astra does not even need regular watering, especially if the land at the roots is mulled. You will have to water in a drought, but carefully: overflow for flowers is harmful and quickly destroys them. Complex mineral fertilizers are used during the appearance of buds and in the middle of flowering. If the shoots are very long, they will have to be tied up.
New Belgian Astra grows strongly, so every two or three years, in early spring, the bushes should be divided, rejuvenating the plantings and thus maintaining the ability to bloom. And once every six years, the flower garden moves to another place or the soil is enriched under it.
But no winter preparation is required: the New Belgian aster has high winter hardiness, does not require shelters and does not freeze in the cold. The only reason to additionally warm the soil is if for some reason you divided the bushes in the fall and they have not yet fully adapted. Sawdust or lapnik is enough to help asters survive until spring.
Caution: powdery mildew!
In relation to pests, the New Belgian aster, the landing and care of which are so hassle-free, can make you worry. She is very vulnerable to powdery mildew, and she will have to look more often for lesions. And if the summer is rainy, the danger increases several times. In order to prevent the death of your flowers, you can begin to irrigate them in the spring with preparations that form a protective film that prevents infection from entering. And at the first sign of illness, you need to spray flowers in the evenings with sulfuric fungicides.
To make your flower garden look brighter, more harmonious and richer, you can supplement asters with flowers that also bloom in autumn: rudbeckia, heliopsis, echinacea, and gelenium. High cereals will be good in one flower bed with asters.