The Garden Thyme Podcast
A monthly podcast where we help you get down and dirty in your garden, with timely gardening tips, information about native plants, and more! The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. https://extension.umd.edu/. This institution is an equal opportunity provider.
The Garden Thyme Podcast
609 Fall Blooming Asters
Hey Listener,
In this month's episode, we’re talking about how much we love fall. One of our favorite things about fall, besides the food, is ASTERS! These flowers add a pop of color to any fall landscape and provide food for many late-season pollinators and beneficial insects.
We also have our :
- Native Plant of the Month: Gray Goldenrod
- Bug of the Month: Pearl Crescent Butterfly
- Monthly Garden Tips: Growing Garlic
Here is our list of common garden and landscape asters:
- New England Aster(Symphyotrichum novae-angliaa) (4-8 zone)
- New York Aster ( Symphyotrichum novi-belgii)
- Aromatic Aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium)
- Heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides)
- Smooth Aster (Symphyotrichum leave)
- Purple-stemmed Aster (Symphyotrichum puniceum)
- Saltmarsh aster (Symphyotrichum tenuifolium)
- Wood Aster or White heart-leaved aster (Eurybia divaricata)
- Common blue wood aster (Symphyotrichum cordifolium)
We currently have an open survey for ALL listeners. Whether you’ve listened to all of our episodes, or this is your first time. We developed an evaluation to determine if the information we share on the podcast has made a difference in your practices at home. We promise that it is a short, easy 5-minute survey, and we even have exclusive podcast stickers to give to those who participate. We are so thankful for the feedback, and we appreciate you tuning in for the podcast!
The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Principal Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture; Rachel Rhodes- Senior Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne's County); and Emily Zobel- Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).
Theme Song: By Jason Inc,
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Garden Thyme Podcast Transcript
S06:E09 Fall Blooming Asters
Sept 2025
Note: The Garden Thyme Podcast is produced for the ear and is designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Emily
Hello, listener. Welcome to the University of Maryland extension presents the Garden Time podcast, where we talk about getting down and Dirty in your Garden. We're your hosts. I'm Emily.
Rachel
I'm Rachel.
Mikaela
And I'm Mikaela.
Emily
In this month's episode, we're talking about everybody's favorite fall-blooming flower, asters.
Mikaela
This is just a reminder that we currently have an open survey for all listeners. Whether you've listened to all of our episodes or this is your first time, we developed an evaluation to find out if the information we share on the podcast has made a difference in your practices at home. We promise it's a short, easy five-minute survey, and we even have exclusive podcast stickers to give to those who participate. We are all so thankful for the feedback, and we appreciate you tuning in for the podcast. You can take the survey at go. U MD dot E DU / gardenthyme . That's garden-T-H-Y-M-E. We'll include the link to the survey in the show notes.
Emily
It's no secret for any long term listeners that we are fans of fall. I know that I'm super excited to get some apple cinnamon donuts, which are a fall favorite of mine. What What about you guys? What are you most looking forward to for fall?
Mikaela
Besides gourds and the leaves changing colors, I'm excited for less heat. I just love when the nights are crisp, I can finally open my windows again, and the humidity is less suffocating. I'm sure everybody feels the same.
Rachel
I love the pumpkin-flaved everything. And I'm not talking like that weird, artificially-flaved pumpkin whatnot. I want pumpkin pie. I want pumpkin bread. I found a recipe for pumpkin Whoopy Pies. I'm going to make that. With cream cheese, Frosting in the middle? Yes.
Mikaela
Thank you, team. We'll have to do an episode just on totally non-related to plants or horticulture or anything. It's just reviewing pumpkin spice-flaved things. Yeah. So and speaking of, the season isn't just about cozy days, fall festivals, pumpkin spice, but a lot of fall native flowers, like asters, which are critical for supporting pollinators as they prepare for winter.
Rachel
These plants are essential for our pollinators and butterflies and bees to build up that fat reserve that they need to migrate or to hibernate.
Emily
Asters are bright-colored, daisy-shaped flowers that bloom in the late summer into early fall. They come in a wide variety of colors and sizes. They're easy to grow, making them a great addition to your garden or landscape. And as a bonus, they're relatively disease and deer resistant. Astres belong to the Asteraceae family, which has the largest number of flowering plants, over 32,000 species worldwide. They are found in every continent except for Antarctica, which I personally think we need to get those penguins some astres.
Mikaela
I bet there is a native aster on Antarctica, but they just haven't found it yet.
Emily
Yeah. Up on some mountain somewhere where it's just slightly warm enough to blue.
Mikaela
Right.
Rachel
Yes. Could you imagine the pink ones, instead of carrying rocks, they carry a little astre? Oh, my God. That would be the best. So fun facts about asters, because I know that's why you're here listening, is to get those fun facts. There are over 2,400 species of native asters to North America. In the 1900s, when botanists began comparing the DNA of Eurasian asters with North American asterspecies, they found that the asters native to North America were more closely related to another genre especially goldenrods, solidago, and fleabane. Many of our North American asters are now in the genus symphotrica or genus Eurybia species. Symphotryche, whose name comes from Greek, symph meaning together, and trike meaning hair, in possible reference to the flowers' anthers. You guys know I love Greek mythology and- We know. Dissecting words. That's the great. Eurybia species tend to have a smaller number of relatively wide ray florets. So astres come in a wide range of colors, from white and to blues and pinks, to hybrids of deep scarlet and purple. Most varieties will grow to be about one to four foot in height, with some species growing as tall as five to six foot, and some staying as small as 6 inches.
Rachel
Their width typically ranges from 1 foot to 3 foot. They can be planted any time from spring through fall, and we recommend We recommend not planting them during the heat of summer. We recommend not planting anything during the heat of summer because nothing wants to live in the heat of summer. If you live in a cool area, you should plant them no later than early fall so the roots have time to develop before freezing temperatures arrive. They can be grown in containers using lightweight potting mix. Make sure that your pot has drainage holes. We always say, check that bottom. You have to make sure. And they You need access to water because these are typically perennial crops. So once you plant them in a container, they're going to live there. And you may want to move the containers closer to your home during the winter months so they're a little bit insulated and away from the cold weather, and the house can protect them.
Mikaela
So what makes this family unique is the flower. And what we think of as an individual flower is actually a head comprised of multiple tiny flowers. There are the central disk flowers, which are arranged in a compressed spiral. If you think about a sunflower, which also belongs to this family, and how the seeds are arranged, they do look like a very tight spiral formation. And the disk flowers are yellow, changing to pink or darker colors when they're pollinated, while the flowers around the edge are called ray flowers. Those are the ones we typically think of having the flower petals. And they usually are the more colorful rays that form the entire flower cluster. So that's what we usually grow it for, is that color. But the disk flowers are what I consider the functional flowers because they end up turning into seed.
Emily
I think it's really cool that they change colors when they get pollinated.
Mikaela
I know. Isn't that wild? Functionally, they're quite different than the way we typically think about flowers. And yet this is such a big family group, and it's the classic kids draw when you ask them to draw a flower. It's usually like a daisy or a sunflower or something like that. So that's this family. Care-wise, they're pretty easy to grow. So they tolerate different Hardiness zones from zone 3 to zone 9, depending on the species, of course. But they typically like sites to full to partial sun, with the exception of a few Eurebia species, which like shade. So Once they're established, they require little watering unless natural conditions have become unusually dry, we're going through a drought, and the plants are showing signs of stress. Usually, we want the soil to be about moist but not too saturated. Again, with the exception of one of the species we'll talk about because it likes to be in swampy areas. And then you can mulch to reduce water loss, and that's an important strategy for preventing disease as well. Pinching back the stems or deadheading several times before mid-July can help control the plant height. It's what that classic term Chelsea chop, where you're cutting back like a third of the plant.
Mikaela
And this promotes a more bushy plant rather than too tall, because several species get pretty tall, and it encourages more blooming throughout the entire season when you deadhead. You can leave wilted blooms at the end of the season if you want them to self-sow. I have New England Aster and Whitewood Aster, and both them are very good at self-seeding and replicating all over the place. So it makes for great plants that you can dig up and then relocate later. What I will say about the Chelsea chop real quick, just because I've been reading some articles about it, is sometimes doing that Chelsea chop or cutting back the flowers before they start to develop can interrupt pollination cycles with the insects because the insects are anticipating that they'll be blooming at a normal time. And when you to cut back the plant height, that delays blooming. And so sometimes they'll come looking for flowers and they're not in bloom yet. So keep that in mind. Maybe chop back only if you need to or chop back the ones at the front so they don't get too tall, but leaving some that are naturally tall to bloom at the appropriate time.
Mikaela
And some gardeners say a layer of organic mulch will supply all the nutrients that they need, while other people suggest a light application of an organic fertilizer. But you don't want to apply fertilizer once they've started blooming, as it may quicken the bloom time because it's using those nutrients to develop seeds instead. What I will say, as someone who advocates for native plants, of course, sometimes too much fertilizer or nutrients can result in tall or leggy plants that flop over. So it isn't always necessary. In fact, a lot of our native Aster species, they're very well adapted to low nutrient locations and soils. So using fertilizer, things like that, false applications of fertilizer might not be necessary at all.
Rachel
Those were some really great tips about fertilizing our native plants and their normal adaptation to our soil Soils. Some of them really can grow very, very well in poor soils, and that's what makes them great native plants. In the spring, you can start to divide them when the new shoots are emerging, and And this will give them an entire growing season to overcome the shock of dividing them. The frequency of division really depends on the variety, so the species and the cultivar, but most of them will benefit from division every 2-4 years. And they can be grown from seed, but germination may be uneven. You want to start seeds indoors during the winter in paths or flats, keeping them refrigerated for 4-6 weeks, so about one and a half months. And with this, you're simulating winter dormancy. Now, you can also do this in the milk jug method and put them outside, because that's going to simulate winter dormancy as well. They do need this period of cold to begin germination. So once germination When the inflammation occurs, you can plant the young plants outside after the danger of frost has passed. So that's usually mid to late spring.
Rachel
And you'll have to check your zone with the USDA hardiness map to make sure that When you know your area of frost, free dates have passed. So our astres do have some diseases like rust or powdery mildew. You can prune these out and Penn State University has a really great handout on Aster diseases, and we'll link that in the show notes. Aster yellow is becoming more common in Maryland with our cone flowers. So with that, you're going to take that plant out if it's infected. And there are some pests, like lace bugs, and aphids, and mites. But for those, we rely on our beneficial insects and nature to help control those.
Mikaela
Rachel, could you quickly describe what the symptoms of Aster yellows looks like?
Rachel
So Aster yellow is a plant disease caused by a phytoplasm. It's like a type of bacteria-like organism, and it affects plants in the Asteracea family. So that's our Aster, our cone flowers, and our marigolds. And symptoms that you're going to see are yellowing of leaves, stunted growth, distorted or bushy flowers, green petals, or leafy growth within the flower. It's like an alien plant or an alien has taken over your Aster. That's what I always think of. It's like a little alien growth form just hanging out there. And then your stems could even become thin or spindly. Aster yellow is spread by leaf hoppers, so that's insects that feed on infected plants, and then transmit the phytoplasm to healthy plants when they feed.
Mikaela
Perfect. That's exactly how I would describe it, is like an alien takeover. It looks really before.
Rachel
Yeah. I mean, people do send us pictures during the height of the growing season, and they're like, What's going on? And it is becoming more and more common, I feel like, in Maryland. I feel like I'm getting more reports every spring and summer.
Mikaela
I don't know the lay period time is between when a plant gets affected and when it starts exhibiting symptoms because it could have it and be transmitted before you even know that it's a problem and get it out.
Rachel
I'm not sure either.
Emily
I think having now heard about the different distinct types of flowers within the flower that we think of, it makes more sense on how this disease then works because it almost looks like you have small flowers budding out of your bigger flowers. So that makes sense now that we've talked about the fact that that big flower that we think of as one flower is actually all these little tiny flowers.
Rachel
Oh, talking about the biology, University of Minnesota extension has a really great page on Aster yellows. The Aster yellow phytoplasm moves systemically through the plant infecting every part of the roots through the flower. And the phytoplasm doesn't survive in the debris of infected plants. But it can survive in the crown or roots of infected perennial plants. So it is very important that if you see it on yours, then you need to get rid of that plant.
Emily
You probably need to dig it up then?
Rachel
Yeah, you probably need to dig it up and dispose of that plant properly. So that's something that you're probably not going to put in your compost.
Mikaela
And it sounds as though you can replant, but do you really want to if it has a chance of getting reinfected from adjacent plants?
Rachel
Yeah. And they also have how the phytoplasm lives within the leaf hopper. So after a leaf hopper feeds on an infected plant, in a minimum of two weeks, the phytoplasm moves through the insects gut into the salivary glands. Only two weeks.
Mikaela
That's pretty quick turnover, to be honest.
Rachel
Once that leaf hopper begins to feed on other plants, then it starts infection all over again. And it will continue to transmit that pathogen every single time it feeds for the rest of its life.
Emily
Wow, that's nuts, Rachel.
Rachel
I know. You guys know I love diseases. So thanks for bringing it up, Mikaela.
Emily
We know you love plant diseases. So while we have some insect pests like the plant hoppers and lace bugs and aphids and mites that we may not want on our asters, we do have a lot of beneficial insects that will also be found on our insters. So we know because those flowers are one of the late-season pollinator sources, astres are likely going to attract lots of bees, particularly a lot of our specialized native bees that come out in that fall season. You also are going to have a lot of our late-season butterflies that are going to be all over your astre plants. It is also the host plant for several different caterpillar species. Actually, according to the National Wildlife Foundation, the astrogenus symphiotrichum Caterpillar's. It feeds at least 100 different species of caterpillars. Because, again, remember how big this group of flowers are? So you have so many different caterpillar species that can be fed on asters. Two, then I want to highlight that are specifically use asters as host plants would be the Pearl Crescent butterfly, which is my bug of the month, so stick around to learn more about it, and the Silvri checker spot butterfly.
Emily
So another neat benefit of these is when it comes to springtime, if If you cut off the heads of them, some of our native bees will use those hollow stems for their young. So if you're going to do this, you're going to leave the flower heads up all winter because birds, particularly, will use those seeds, and that includes species of American goldfinches, orange-crouled wobblers, dark-eye jankos, indigo buntings, and more are known to feed on those seeds all throughout winter. So come like late winter, early spring, if you deadhead those seeds heads, shake any remaining seeds off so you can reseed or collect them and put them in pots and start some other ones. But if you cut those stems at about 12 to 24 inches or ranging between, sometime around March, our native bees, when they emerge out in the spring, the native bees will feed and then they'll use those hollow stems for nesting. And what you're going to want to do is leave those stems up for an entire whole year before you cut those stems down. Because remember, these bees are going to lay their eggs in them. Their eggs are going to hatch and grow inside those stems, and then they won't emerge again until the following year.
Emily
So you have to leave the stems up for a whole calendar year in order to help the bees. And a fun fact about our astres is there's also help support hummingbirds during their migration, which is also taking place during the fall. So you occasionally can find a ruby-throated hummingbird feeding on some of the astres, but it tends to be the ones that have the slightly larger flower heads to them. So speaking of that, we think that there is an astre for everybody's garden. And there's such a wide variety that you can grow here in the Mid-Atlantic state. So we're going to now break down some of the most common garden astres that you could consider putting in your garden as well. So, Rachael, you want to start with some of the most popular ones?
Rachel
I do. I feel like the first one I'm going to talk about is one that you're going to see pretty frequently in nurseries, and that's New England Aster. It's very, very common. It has very showy purple daisy flowers, and you see these blooming late summer to early fall. This burly, growing selection shines with its robust habit and size. So It can get a little big. It can get 4 to 6 foot and tall. So I love it because it has that purple daisy flower, and it goes really good with goldenrod. They play off each other very, very well. It's easily grown in an average, medium, well-drained soil, but it does need full sun, and the soil needs to be moist and rich. It will self-seed, as Mikaela talked about earlier, and it's perfect for us lazy gardeners who don't like such a neat and tidy place and habit. And I feel like pollinators just absolutely adore this plant, and they'll jump in between New England Aster and Golden Rods seamlessly. And then our second one is New York Aster. This is very similar to New England Aster, but it tends to be a little shorter in its habit, only about three to five foot in tall.
Rachel
So this might be for someone who doesn't want that six foot growth height. And it is moderately salt-tolerant. So this is for our people that are living close to the shoreline, and it also prefers full sun.
Emily
Yeah, I think both of those are some of my favorites.
Rachel
I think so, too. Me, too.
Emily
They're just so charismatic with that purple.
Rachel
Yeah. And there's a variation in the purple, too. Some can have that very pale purple, some can be very bright. So I feel like that's very nice, too. And because we don't get purple in the fall, naturally, besides New York ironweed, realistically, It's more of those autuminal hues, yellow, orange, red that we're seeing. So that purple adds a really good bright spot to our warm falls.
Mikaela
That's a good point. And I would say that these two are the ones you're going to find the most variety is available for- Exactly. For purchase. They'll have different colors, too. The varieties could be pink, they can be light lavender, they can be really dark or deep purple. Yeah, they have a wide range. Yeah.
Rachel
I I love them.
Emily
So the next one we're going to talk about is Aromatic Esther, and this is a good one. This is one of Mikaela's favorite. I should say these are all all of our favorites. We all love all of these, but each one has different unique habitats that it's ideal for. And in the case of Aromatic Esther, it's really good for dry locations. So if you have a full sun area that's a little bit more drier, this one might be a good Esther for you. It does have a clumping, growing pattern to it, and the colors tend to be a little bit more of a blush to pink color compared to that purple from the New England and New York asters. This one tends to be a little bit more on the shorter size scale in that it typically grows to be about two feet tall, so much more easy to have in a garden setting instead of a meadow setting. You can grow it in USDA zones three through eight. It's more bushy and compact in a low-growing one. It does also have hairy stems compared to some of the other asters. It's probably less likely to get things like aphids on it because of that.
Emily
The next one I'm going to talk about is the heathaster. This one's a pretty easy one to grow as well. It likes average to dry to medium soil. It It needs to be in full sun, but again, the soil needs to not be dry, but it needs to be well-drained. So this is not an ideal one for people with clay. But if you've got a good sandy or sandy loam, this will do well. It does tend to do okay in those poorer soils, and it does tend to tolerate drought conditions a little bit more. So this one might be ideal if you've got a larger property with a full sunny area that you don't really want to drag a hose to as much. This could be a good one for you. This one does produce very cute little white flowers, and it is also a little bit on the more busier side comparatively, and it gets about 2 to 3 feet tall. This one, however, does have a habit of spreading and working a little bit, I don't want to say a ground cover because it's bushy, but it will spread a little bit through rye zones.
Emily
And this one can be grown in USDA zones 3 through 10. So this one can go a little bit more Southern than some of the other Aster varieties that we're going to talk about. The next one that we're going to talk about is smooth Aster. This one's another easy to grow one in that average dry to medium, well-drained full-sun soil. This one is nice because it self-seeds very easily. It's got really good seeds. So if you plant this one, the patch will slowly grow as it self seeds itself. It's also easy to collect the seeds because of that and then share plants with friends. This one gets 2 to 4 feet tall, and you can grow it USDA zones three through eight. So this one has a really cute light lavender flower. So if you wanted an astre that wasn't quite as bold as, say, the New York or the New England, this one might be a good choice for your landscape.
Mikaela
I agree. All these pics are just fabulous. They are great. Of course, my pics that I'm about to talk about may not necessarily be great for a home garden tour, but they have unique characteristics that these other astres don't. So purple stemmed astre, which I also refer to as swamp astre because of where it lives, because it tolerates wet, soggy, boggy environments very, very well. So this is what you'll find in wet meadows, soggy thickets. It starts to bloom in late summer. It's a little bit earlier than some of the others. And it also blooms a light purple color. And it tolerates and might even prefer calcerius soils. So that's alkaline soils. I think it tolerates between seven and eight for a pH, which is pretty high. This one gets to be about three to five feet tall, and it also is pretty comfortable in zones seven to three. But again, it is a moisture-loving plant, and it likely will not tolerate super acidic environments because of its preference for alkaline Now, the other one I'm going to mention is for all of us out here on the coastal plain, where we get a lot of Brackish water, a lot of saltwater inundations, because this is the salt marsh astre, which doesn't look like some of its other astre family, okay?
Mikaela
It's got this really stiff, glabrous green stems, but the flowers are purple, but they're teeny, teeny, tiny. I would go so far as to call them inconspicuous. They're quite small. But this is an Aster that pops up in Brackish shorelines. And again, it's a coastal plain species. And so this is something you're not going to find out West. It's pretty specific to the Atlantic region here. I just think it's a very unique-looking plant, and I always like to talk about things that are native to our coastal plain, of course. So next time you're out and looking at a shoreline, I would look for it because it does have these very tough green stems that nothing else really has. And moving to the other genus that we had discussed earlier, Eurebaia, the white woodaster is a plant that is pretty common, especially in home gardens. I like to recommend it for gardens that have shade and dry soils because those are notoriously tough environments for plants to grow in. And the white woodaster just will knock it out of the park. It just grows really well in pretty much any location that you give it, except full hot blazing sun.
Mikaela
It gets to be about three feet tall. It will spread vigorously by rhizoms, but it's also really good at spreading by seed. So if you're looking to fill in an area, let's say around the root system of a tree, in a dense shade environment where you don't want to keep mulching, this is your guy. This is the one you need to grow. It has white flowers, but it also has these distinctive leaves that are heart-shaped and they're coarsely toothed. I actually think the leaves are pretty. They're like a darker green. This might not be easy to find in a garden center, like a traditional one. But if you go to a native plant nursery, for sure they will have this one because it's a very good performer. And then once you have it, it's very easy to grow from seed. And it has a pretty wide hardness zone from three to eight.
Rachel
I love the white woodaster. I think it's just beautiful.
Mikaela
It's the plant I recommend for people who have shade and feel like they kill everything else. So Emily, this is for you.
Emily
I just want to know what I was like, look to see if you can find this because I have a big shady part in the back of my property. I've been trying to think of something to put around my maple tree, but I think because of how it is, it gets Probably slightly more sun?
Mikaela
Oh, well, that's okay, though. It'll take three to four hours of sunlight. It'll do part shade. Don't buy any because I have so much it's growing in the cracks of our sidewalk. I have some that have been growing in pots for like years because they accidentally seed themselves in a pot that something else died in. That's how resilient this is.
Emily
I love that. I just accidentally seeded myself all over this pot. It's fine.
Mikaela
Like something else died in. I'm like, oh, I should probably empty that. And then like a whitewood esther.
Emily
I love it.
Rachel
That's awesome. So along with We're talking about our whitewood astre, we have our common bluewood astre. So this is also known as the heartleafed astre, and it's very similar in appearance to the whitewood astre, except for its bluish flowers. So this beauty will consistently bloom from September to October. And unlike many of the other asters we've talked about, this guy only gets to about three foot. So that's really, really nice for our home garden. And Emily It will tolerate medium to dry soils, ding, ding, ding, and full to part shade.
Emily
This is another good option for around the tree.
Rachel
Yeah. Add some YTS and some blues. It is Hardy in USDA zones three to nine. So rounding out, that's a really good one to end on, I feel like. And I think that we've learned throughout all of these asters that we've talked about, there's an astre for all of our gardens, and they can be very easy to find through our native plant nurseries. And we hope we've inspired you to plant some for next year so that you add something to your fall color garden. If we're replacing a non-native plant with a native plant a three or four a year, that's a good number, right? Just to slowly and incrementally add more native plants into our gardens so that we're supporting our native pollinators. I think that's something we can all do fairly easily.
Mikaela
I think that's a very wise thing to say, Rachel, because it is easy to think, Okay, I want to just rip everything out. I want to replace everything. But then you get overwhelmed. And that's not the goal, right? Is that it's incremental. That's how change happens sometimes, is incrementally. Yeah.
:Bird songs: It’s the Native Plant of the Month with Mikaela: Bird songs:
Mikaela
Guess what? Native Plant of the Month is not- It's not an Aster. An Aster, exactly. But it is, it is in the Aster family. And I can't believe I feel really embarrassed to admit I've never had a golden rod as my native plant of the month. Even the episode where we did golden rods, I think I picked something else.
Emily
I did. Well, I'm glad you didn't pick an Aster, though, because I feel like we've highlighted so many. So it's nice to have something that you can plant with an astre. And golden rods, as we've mentioned, go great with astres.
Mikaela
That's absolutely right. And if you're curious to learn more about golden rods, we have an entire episode. I can't remember what season and episode.
Emily
Two years ago in September. So I think it would have been 2023 September episode on Gorgeous Golden Rods.
Mikaela
Yeah, it would have been our September episode in 2023. Yeah, that's exactly right. So I'm pretty excited. Now, there are 27 species of golden rod, and I don't know why I picked this one exactly, looking back on it. I must have felt inspired in the moment, but I picked a gray golden rod, which is Soledago Morales. And again, I picked this particular species, I think because of its wide distribution range, because it's something that will be pretty easily found across much of the United States. So it goes as far west as Montana, which is pretty far, and then as far north as Maine, and then as far south as Texas and Florida. So it's a pretty broad part of the United States. So there's a good chance you'd run across this out in natural lands. So this is a slender stemmed member of the Aster family, as are all golden rods. And this particular species only reaches one and a half to three feet tall with some thin, coarsely toothed leaves. Now, this particular flower head has a nice vase-shaped flower, which also has some attractive qualities. And of course, it blooms yellow much across late summer and in through fall.
Mikaela
So another wonderful feature of this plant is the resiliency. They grow sun, they grow in part shade to shade in medium soil moisture, as well as a wide variety of soil conditions. It can handle a lot of different native soil types. It has a tolerance for sandy, rocky soils, as well as clay to low textures. So there's a really good chance it will be able to survive, which we just discussed is something we really appreciate about plants, is despite our intervention, they can still survive. So it's noted that while some golden rod species are more aggressive in habit, gray goldenrod is a little bit less aggressive. And so it serves as a nice landscape species, or if you're doing a pocket meadow or something like that, this would be a great choice because of its smaller stature, as opposed to the Canadian golden rod, which can get like 5, 6 feet tall. However, it can develop rhizomes that will creep once they are established in a more optimal growing environment. So it can spread a little bit, but usually it's a manageable growth. And of course, we don't mention native plants without highlighting the value to beneficial insects.
Mikaela
So members of the solidagoedanus, in particular, are of high value because they provide late-season nectar and pollen sources for insects right before they go into diapause or in hibernation. And I think I counted, while it supports many different butterfly and moth species for feeding for specialized bees, it has like nine 10 or 10 specialized bees that only associate with Soledago, it might even be this species in particular. Not to mention that the songbirds will eat the seeds at the end of the season. So it just has a wide service range when it comes to environmental benefits. Now, if you're going to pair this with different plants, I might recommend planting it with liatris, which is also called blazing star. That's a stock with tight clusters of purple flowers. And And, of course, fall-blooming asters from the symphiotrichum family. So this pops very well when you pair it with some of those brighter purple-colored, like we talked about, New Englandaster or Aromatic Esther, any of those would pair very well with this bright yellow plant. And bonus, we always say bonus, it's deer resistant, so they're less likely to feed on this. Golden rods in general are really tough, hairy, unpalatable stems, and so deer just tend to not go for it unless they're really desperate.
Mikaela
So that's always a bonus for us. So golden rods are just powerhouses. And honestly, even if you don't plant this species, there's a golden rod for every growing environment. Go back to that golden rod episode if you want to learn more. And one should be included in every landscape alongside your asters, right?
Emily
Yeah, that's a good one.
Mikaela
And that's my plant of the month, I love golden rods.
: Buzzing noise: What’s That buzzing? It’s the Bugs of the Month with Emily: Buzzing Noise:
Emily
So this month's Bug of the Month, as I've already hinted to earlier, is the Pearl Crescent Butterfly. And this is a species of butterfly that is native to North America. Generally, you find it east of the Rockies in the United States, but occasionally you can find it in California and Idaho and down in Nevada. They've occasionally had one that's made it over the Rockies or around the Rockies. So occasionally, Western United States does find these. But it's got a fairly wide range. So all the way from Southern Canada, all the way down to like, Northern Mexico, we'll find this butterfly species. It is part of the nymphidaia family or the brushfoot butterflies. So if you know anything about these, if you were to look at this butterfly, you would say it only has four legs instead of the traditional six because the front two legs are modified and they're very short. This one is what I like to call a meadow or an open area species, which is pretty common of the brushfoots. You tend to find it in open areas, so along pastures or meadows, road edges, vacant lots, fields. If you do find it in woodland areas, they tend to be the old wood pine woods that are a little bit more open to places where you'd have that speckle sunlight coming through a forest, so not a very thick wooded area.
Emily
These are a medium-ish size butterfly with a wingspan of about an inch or so. They're very colorful They're very pretty, so they are very charismatic orange, but there's a lot of variety and variability in their pattern. So the antennas on these guys are knobbed, so they've got little hooks on them, and the antennas tend to be fully black on them compared to some of the other crescent butterflies will have either orange or white at the tips of their antenna. So that's one way to hint that you're looking at this one versus a different type of crescent butterfly. You oftentimes will see the males fluttering as they hunt for females. The upper side or the top side of their wings are going to be an orange with a thick black border along the edging of them. Right above that black border, you're going to have little crescent shapes. And sometimes these are very noticeable because they're like a tan to light gray. And sometimes they're not as noticeable because they're like a darker coloration. So you may notice it, you may not. And then they're going to have some fine black marks right above that black band with the crescent shapes.
Emily
And then the rest of the can vary greatly on the patterns that it has with it. The underside of it is also going to have a dark marginal patch with light-colored crescents, which is very typical of these crescent-type butterflies. It's where they get the name from. But this one has so many different varieties. They're all very pretty, striking butterflies, and it's that pop of orange all throughout the seasons. They do have several brews throughout the year. You can find these April through November up in the north. Actually, they will breed all year long in the Southern States and down in Mexico. But around here, we typically see the butterfly adults at least peak around June with a second peak in August through September. So you might be finding them at the beginning of September, but generally, as it starts to get colder, you tend to see less and less butterflies. The caterpillar is a dark brown to charcoal gray with lateral cream stripes on it, and then it's going to have these little short branchy spikes on it. It's not one that I would recommend touching, per se. It's not poisonous or venom, but it's a little spiky and you probably shouldn't be handling it.
Emily
The larvae host plant is asters. If you do have astres, you will probably likely see these. The female moth will lay a cluster of eggs on the underside of the leaves and they will hatch out. And then this is one of those caterpillar species that when it's young, it likes to hang out with its siblings. So they're what we call gorgancious feeders. So for the first few instars, all those caterpillars are going to just hang out together. So if you got some of these on your ashters, you're probably going to notice that there's a part where all the leaves are really chewed out really heavily. And that's because all these little tiny caterpillars are just a whole bunch of them are eating together. So think of it as like if you have a whole cluster of toddlers all eating, they're going to eat a lot. Now, as the larvae stages get older, though, they tend to want their own space and they tend to venture out on their own for those last few instar stages. You may see them like, wandering around, especially if you've got patches of astres, you might have some moving over to other ones.
Emily
They do pupate away from their host plant, and they typically find some structure and hang down off of it. What's interesting is around here, they overwinter, but they overwinter as a caterpillar. So this isn't a species that's going to overwinter in a pupation stage. It overwonders in that third instar caterpillar. And they like to overwinter inside curled leaves like a little sleeping bag. So if we don't say it enough, and I don't know if we said it this episode not, but leave your fall leaves. Take all of those leaves that your trees drop and rake them underneath your asters for these caterpillars to use as sleeping bags. They will then emerge out in the springtime when it starts to warm up. They will do a little bit of feeding, and then they pupate in the spring, and then they emerge as adults. The adults themselves are nectar feeders, so they're not feeding on the leaves at all. But the adults have been found to feed on a wide variety of nectar from flowers, including dog bang, swamp milkweed, shepherd's needle, wintercrest, and astres as well. So again, plant those astres. Again, another great one. If you plant some astres, you will hopefully see this butterfly and more in your yard.
Mikaela
That's so cool. I guess I never noticed that you can't really see their first set of legs, that they only pretty much stand on four legs.
Emily
Just a very cute, charismatic butterfly. The caterpillars are adorable, too. I Again, I'm going to plant astres just so I can get these chunky, bushy caterpillars.
Mikaela
They are cool. I'm going to have to look for them on my astres now because I'm sure I've seen the butterfly, but I've never looked for the caterpillar.
:Music: Get Your Tips of the Month Here with Rachel: Music:
Rachel
All right, everyone. It's time for our Garden Tip of the Month. Yay. I love fall garden tips because it really gets me mentally prepared for fall, and then it sets my heart into winter. And typically in the fall, I do a deep dive into all the fall gardening tasks that you need to accomplish this month. And I feel like after a while, I'm just that mother reminding you to pick up your socks but clean your tomato cages. And I'm not going to do that this month. We've gotten a couple of questions over the season about growing and planting garlic. So I thought, what a better time to talk about how to grow garlic than with my monthly tips. So if you have been a listener for our entirety of 6 Seasons, you would know that I live by the seven P's of the military, and that's prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance. And that's just something that I think is essential to growing garlic because it is about a thought process and planning beforehand. So before you get started, you need to think about a couple of things. Because we're planting garlic in the fall and it has a long maturity date, fall-planted garlic is typically ready for harvest in late June to early July.
Rachel
This means you actually have to lay out your garden plan for the spring and summer of 2026 before you plant your garlic, and you need to adjust it for the space that garlic will inhabit, because garlic is not going to be ready for harvest until late June to early July. So it's literally in the ground for eight months. And it does take up a good amount of space in your garden. So you have to mentally rearrange how you're gardening. If if you want to plant garlic. You'll also need to research which crops you can plant after you harvest garlic, because technically after you harvest garlic, you have another eight weeks during the growing season. So if If you're harvesting garlic late June, you still have July and all of August. So thinking about that and planning properly to make sure that you're using your gardening space efficiently is in with it as well. And then we also think about hard neck garlic or soft neck garlic. And this is purely climate dependent. Our hard neck garlic require 40 nights, that's about 4 to 6 weeks, of temperatures below 40 degrees to trigger vernalization. And this is the cold period that is necessary for our single clove planted in the fall to divide into multiple cloves.
Rachel
And this is the same process that we talk about when we talk about our fall-planted flour bulbs. Without sufficient chilling, Hard neck garlic will not properly develop that bulb, and instead it will just produce a single undivided round. Or we have soft neck garlic, and that's typically what we find in our grocery stores. It grows best in warmer climates, so think zones 5 to 9. And we're in that range in Maryland now. So depending on where you live in the state of Maryland, you could grow soft neck garlic or hard neck garlic. And that's where you have to do your research as well and find out where you lie on that hardiness zone and look into our temperatures that we've had consistently in our area and figure out if you need to grow hard neck or soft neck. Planting of garlic typically happens from September through November, and it needs full sun. So 8 to 10 hours of sunlight. When you're getting ready to plant, you're going to dig a 5-inch deep furrow and plant the cloves bottom-side down and pointy-side up. This is especially important for our hard-neck cultivars and less critical for soft necks.
Rachel
Each clove should be covered with one to two inches of soil, and large cloves produce larger bulbs than smaller cloves. They They love to have well-drained soil, rich, loose, organic matter soil. They are not going to grow well in clay or wet feet. So if you are on the Eastern shore and you know that you have a clay soil, you're probably going to want to try these in a container or a raised bed so that you have that light, fluffy soil. And we have a couple of varieties that you can try. We have excellent hard neck varieties, including German white porcelain, music, Chesnuck red, Georgian fire, and the red Russian. These varieties will thrive with cold vernalization that they receive in the winter, and they will produce large bulbs with a wide range of flavors, from spicy to sweet when they're roast.
Emily
I love the names of some of those.
Rachel
I know.
Emily
Vegetables always have the funnest variety and trade names.
Rachel
They really, really do. So we have some really easy soft neck varieties that you can grow as well. New York White, California Early, Idaho Silverskin, and the buttery Thermadrone. And these varieties perform well in milder winters. So that all goes back to that hardiness stone map. So if you look at it and you're like, It's getting a little bit warmer here in the winter, you might want to try a soft neck variety. Or experiment with both and see what grows best in your garden. You could do half a row with soft neck and half a row with hard neck and see what does best. So things that we're not going to do here if we're going to experiment with growing garlic. We are not going to use grocery store garlic to grow in our garden because they may be a symptomless disease carrier, all right? And we don't want to transfer diseases in our plants. So you're going to purchase garlic from a certified disease-free place. And a lot of our seed catalogs and a lot of our home and garden stores right now have garlic that you can purchase to plant. When we're ordering, we usually are getting 6-7 bulbs per pound of large hard neck garlic, and each bulb of those has 6-7 cloves.
Rachel
So you're going to break off each clove and plant the clove. So you could go in with a couple of your gardening friends and say, Hey, I probably only need two of these garlics. Would you like the other two? Sharing is caring, right? And if you want a great video video on growing garlic, our one and only John Trunfeld with the Home and Garden Information Center has an awesome video on growing garlic on YouTube. You just Google Home and Garden Information Center on YouTube and then type in garlic, and we'll put the link in the show notes as well. It's a great video. John goes over everything. It's amazing. That's my tip of the month. Grow some garlic. Save some money.
Mikaela
Whenever you talk about things like that, even though I've had no interest in growing garlic, suddenly I'm possessed by wanting to grow garlic very badly. I know.
Emily
I just want to eat garlic and garlicy food. So I'm like, Hmm, maybe I should grow my own.
Mikaela
I just want to shop the names I want to try Thermadrone just for the name.
Rachel
Me too.
Mikaela
Sounds like a W-W-E name or something.
Rachel
I want to grow the Georgian fire.
Emily
Yeah, I want to know if that's a spicy or one.
Mikaela
Yes. I was just going to say the same thing. Is it spicy or is it red?
Rachel
It's probably a very robust flavor. It would be great for sauce.
Emily
Oh, yeah.
Mikaela
Chesnuck Red. I like that name for some reason. I assume it's because it has red streaks on it or something.
Emily
I want to grow music just because I can be like, There's music out in my garden.
Mikaela
I'm not patient enough for garlic, unfortunately, I think. I know it need to be.
Rachel
I think that's something else. It definitely takes... You have to commit yourself to eight months in the ground and know that nothing else is going to be in that space. But then, just think about it this way, we know that, one, squash vine borers are coming in hot early, right? Why not use that space to grow garlic and plant a late planting of squash when maybe that first hatching of squash vine borer is out and hasn't found any plants? And, hey, maybe you've beaten it just a little bit. That's just my two cents.
: Music:
Emily
Well, that's all we have for this episode, listener. We hope you enjoyed it, and we'll tune in next month for more gardening tips. If you have any garden-related questions, please email us at umegardenpodcast@gmail. Com, or look us up on Facebook at Garden Time Podcast. That's Garden T-H-Y-M-E. For more information about the University of Maryland extension and these topics, please check out the University of Maryland extension, Home and Garden Information Center website at go. Umd. Edu/hgic. Thanks for listening and have fun getting down and dirty in your garden.
Rachel
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: Music:
Rachel
No, it should be fine if it's the hard neck variety.
Emily
Okay.
Rachel
It's those soft, soft neck varieties that you're going to baby.
Emily
Hard neck for me then. I'm a lazy gardener. I need to be able to throw it out there, and it needs to survive on its own until I go out and deal with it.
Mikaela
That's true. Same. That's true.
Rachel
Same.
Mikaela
No babying here.
Rachel
We don't baby here.
Emily
We just reseed like asters.
Rachel
Yeah. Oh, man.