pruning asters

[William Zech]

we live in new england (zone 6).When is the best time to prune asters?

[Kate Hunter]

If you are refering to cutting back last years growth, I would wait a bit
longer. There is surely some more nasty weather in store for us. But
you dont want to clear it out before the new growth gets going.

If you are wanting to pinch them back prior to bloom to make the plants
more bushy and more floriferous, do this in June.

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Kate Hunter
hun...@fern.igis.uiuc.edu
Gardening in East Central Illinois
Zone 5b

[Robert Dickow]

>we live in new england (zone 6).When is the best time to prune asters?

I prune mine (lots of 'dwarf' NY asters, most of which get 3-4 feet
high even with pruning) about 3 times, cutting off about 1/3 of
the new growth. This results in later blooming, slightly
denser growth, and slightly more flowers. This past season I only
got around to one pruning. Didn't make too much difference
really, but the flowers came a little earlier, which was rather
nice. Anyway, I don't have the patience to 'pinch' them out
because I have too many asters. I just hack at them with
shears. They quickly grow out of the sheared look.

Aside: These plants are a bit weedy, and get powdery mildew.
I think I'll be culling most of these out, except for one
variety that stays fairly short. It think it's Prof. Kippenburg.
The only good thing about these is that they give about the
last flowers of the season, and brighten up a vase nicely.
Unfortunately when they bloom it is about the time of the
first frosts, when my garden looks pretty run down and
autumn leaves are littering things quite a bit, so they
don't help the garden appearance all that much, IMO, despite
the color display. They also seem to be covered with
hundreds of small bees and flies of various kinds when
they bloom, in my area anyway.

***********************************************//*
* Bob Dickow (dic...@uidaho.edu) \\// *
* Associate Professor of Horn/Theory/Composition *
* Lionel Hampton School of Music/Univ of Idaho *
* URL: http://www.uidaho.edu/~dickow/ *
**************************************************

[oldfas...@my-dejanews.com]

In article <16158-36...@newsd-101.iap.bryant.webtv.net>,

bob...@webtv.net (William Zech) wrote:
> we live in new england (zone 6).When is the best time to prune asters?
>

Here in zone 4 I start cutting them back in mid-June. I try to trim the
outer shoots lower than the center to help them mound without flopping too
much, and keep pinching them as necessary until early August or whenever the
buds start to form.

Cathy
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Hills/7994
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/heirloomgardening

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