Leonard Moorehead, the Urban Gardener: Glorious Asters Star

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Leonard Moorehead, GoLocalProv Gardening Expert

Fall is the most under rated garden season. Celestial events emphasize stunning lunar eclipses. Engorged, the moon’s elliptical orbit brings her closer and into sharper detail. Venus is the evening star, Orion rises above the horizon. Crisp air fills every urban gardener’s lungs. We obey calendars ever more distant from their agricultural roots. Commerce, education, and politics distract us. Public symbols reminisce past importance, pumpkins, scare crows, apple cider, and ears of Indian corn are the idols we worship. Corn mazes bring crowds into the open air, artists of every stripe carve ever more clever Jack O Lanterns. Fall fairs feature largest pumpkins, brass bands serenade spectators in football stadia, our clothes are darker, more woolen. We imitate migrating Canada geese and honk away from summer. Yankee thrift turns on the heat and dreads higher energy bills. We close the windows. 

Look out the windows. Let’s take a closer look into the garden. There is much to see.

 Walk outside. Pause. Inhale through the nose, draw in the breath from deep in the belly. Slowly exhale. Live in the moment. Everything you need to know is there. Behold the stars. Native American New England asters are easy to spot and with good reason, they are stunning. 17th century Pilgrims sent more than beaver pelts and cod to England. Cargos packed into small sailing ships also included American plants, not only maize or “corn” but also the beautiful aster. Unpurified England placed our aster among the saints to become the Michealmass Daisy. Centuries later Victorian anglophiles gleaned the aster from stone walled roadsides and the margins of over grazed rocky fields, a bit astonished to enroll ennobled asters into the garden. Asters thrive without much care. Although abundant, they are far from commonplace. Contempt isn’t always linked to familiarity. Grow asters in your garden, I do without regret and you can too. 

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Native American wild flowers appeal to gardeners who are not enrolled in the need to improve genetics. Perennial asters have great power, myriads of shameless purple petals cavort around golden centers, and bumblebees fly laden with nutritious pollen from bloom to bloom. Our pause in the moment is rich. Listen for the sotto voce.  Observe each aster rises 3 or 4 feet above the horizon only to sprawl under glorious flowery array. Gardeners guide rather than direct. Duplicate native conditions and plants thrive. Asters thrive in sunny places, their needs modest. Harried urban soils are fine for asters, laconic endurance becomes Olympian medalist in well drained sandy loams enriched each year with a top dressing of composted leaves. 

Asters are long lived perennials. They fulfill promises. Give them undisturbed sunshine, allow them a premier space and above all, tolerate their simple dignity during spring and summer. Their robust growth easily crowds out competitors. For those with plenty of space, leave asters alone and enjoy their vigor. My more constrained space asks for more care usually a few weeks after their prolonged September through Thanksgiving bloom. 

Use sharp pruning shears after bloom and cut the stems back to 3 or 4 inches. Separate, don’t pull the stems, and lay onto an ever handy burlap bag spread nearby. Lay the top growth neatly, stems aligned. Gently rake out the thick crown growth and edge around the core, the edging spade is perfect, the essential long handled shovel will do. 

Compost the fibrous stems and blooms. I use a time tested trench method for especially tough organic materials. Trenches are rectangular.  Pits are adaptable compromises for adjacent plantings. Select a space, 3’x5’ is quick and manageable. Cover surrounding ground with burlap or tarpaulin. Rake the permanent mulch onto the outside perimeter of the covering. Dig a spade’s depth into the humus beneath with perhaps the most important garden tool, the long handled shovel. Put your money here. Select long handled shovels with thick handles that ergonomically suit our hands. Wood is traditional and reliable. The best steel spades have turned edges for the foot, an oval shape and short teeth towards the end. 

Properly done shoveling is neither mindless nor laborious. Wear sturdy garden shoes, gloves, and a hat. Sink the spade into the soil, use the soil as fulcrum and firmly but gently move the handle. I take this chance to focus entirely upon the act, this is a peaceful place. Repeat this mantra in one act, define the trench, dig in, loosen a bit, fulcrum the humus onto the covering, repeat. Step into the trench and dig another spade’s depth onto the covering, keep each layer generally separate. This approach is the classic construction of raised beds if a gardener wants to remove more layers of soil. 

Soils change character vertically. Often urban garden plots are a form of archeology, all describe millennia of geological events. Glacial soils offer a glimpse into the past, beneath my garden are sugar grained layers of sand, mostly bleached of soluble nutrients deposited as a 2 mile thick moving layer of ice melted. The seashore was then many miles further south and east. Sea levels rose many miles inland, wooly mammoths and people followed their retreat far to the north. I fill a few five gallon buckets with the sand for its many uses elsewhere and lay the tough aster stems on the bottom of the trench. Most gardeners are pressed for time and move on, a general rule of thumb urges one to hasten natural processes and break up organic materials into smaller pieces and expose as much surface of the material to microbes and earthworms as possible. However, time is on our side, now is the chance to fill the trench with carbon dense materials slow to decompose, such as stems, thorny rose trimmings, tough hydrangea and privet clippings, maybe the Mother’s Day azalea roots and all that never really took hold.

Reverse the process and cover the tough materials with the microbe rich old mulch. Add more organic materials, leaves are especially abundant in my city, cover with the top most humus, and repeat until the deepest soils are the current top layer. The trench may rise above the surrounding soil, no worries. You’ve created a natural sponge that will absorb and retain rainfall. An explosion of life will transform all and settle the trench. Adjustable to the task at hand, complete aster winter care and fold up the tarpaulin. There will be very little evidence of the work and of course, always return clean tools to proper storage. Trench composting lends itself to economy of motion and labor. One always recognizes old trenches as the areas of the garden with very thick layers of dark and earthy fertile humus. 

Asters crowd and thicken over time to eventually exhaust the soil to form a donut. Lift and divide clumps anytime during dormancy and give the divisions away to friends. Fill in any deficits with compost, a handful of bone meal and mulch. Rake away the mulch in spring and admire the green shoots, fill in any holes with compost. Towards the end of spring or when a foot tall, snip the stem tips or apical meristem. Lateral side growth will quickly branch outwards for additional blooms.  It’s ok to overlook this trim during a busy garden season. Late in the summer gently lift about a third of top heavy growth and drive a short stake firmly into the soil. 3 stakes will encircle the plant. Anchor and surround the entire clump with jute cords, careful not to chafe the stems. Add or adjust accordingly and the asters will growth upwards into 4 foot mounds of beautiful flowers. Asters are not confined to purple, pink and white varieties are equally lovely. Nor are all so tall, find a place in your garden for the asters. 

Fall is under rated as a garden season. Asters graciously offer plenty of proof the garden has much to offer outside our closed windows. Join the bumble bees and admire our local contribution to world horticulture, the stunning New England aster. Meet the rest of this starry purple, white, and pink clan. 

Leonard Moorehead is a life- long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence, RI. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit tree.

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