By mid-September, gardeners can start to feel like they’re winding down with their annuals, perennials and deciduous plants.

This year, however, mid-September also was when one of our last native wildflowers to bloom began its late-in-the-season display. Its cultivated kin in area landscapes started to flower then, too – typically in shades of white, blue, pink, purple and violet

The colors “popped” next to drying grass clumps and dying perennials. They looked great combined with evergreens or put next to mums flowering in warm autumn hues.

Don’t worry if you didn’t notice. Among the perennials, asters not only have one of the latest but also provide one of the longest flower shows available – a month or more.

Perhaps that’s why area folklore holds that when the wild heath asters start to bloom, fall’s first freeze is just six weeks behind.

The heath asters around here are the “weeds” now providing clouds of daisy-like blooms alongside roads and streams. You may know them as starworts, frost flowers or Michaelmas daisies.

In any case, just paying attention to asters’ late-season efforts can lift your spirits.

We’re nearing the end of aster transplant season, too, so if you’re quick about it, you can even buy a few of your own from a local nursery. Asters are one of the few perennials that seem to like getting established in fall.

Just be sure to shop for disease-resistant varieties. They’ll prefer good air circulation and well-drained soil, rich with organic matter. They’ll do well in sun to half shade.

Mark where you plant them, though, so you don’t mistake them for weeds when they slowly emerge next spring. As they grow, pinch them back, exactly as you do mums. Avoid overhead watering and don’t let the plants get overly dry, because both practices promote powdery mildew in some varieties. (Yes, dry conditions can foster aster mildew.)

Just be warned that happy asters can be enthusiastic growers, spreading with vigorous shoots and dying out in the center. But, you can simply discard a clump’s center in spring and replant the shoots where you want them to provide an “uplift” of flowers for fall.

BTW, as cut flowers, asters can have a vase life of five to 10 days!

This ‘n That

Once September winds down, your odds for getting the most from seeding or overseeding a tall fescue or Kentucky bluegrass lawn start winding down, too. In many years, they reach about 50-50 by October 15.

If you want to review the details on what you still can and should do in lawn care this fall, you can drop by your county’s Extension office. You can browse K-State Research and Extension’s turf advice online at http://www.ksuturf.com/Homeowners.html or access MU’s at http://extension.missouri.edu/explore/agguides/hort/#Lawns.

Speaking of fall chores, crocuses, daffodils and tulips aren’t the only flowering bulbs you could plant from now through October. Although some may be difficult to find locally, the options are much more wide-ranging.

For example, fall-planted bulbs also include such early spring bloomers as Bulbocodium (spring meadow saffron), Chionodoxa (glory-of-the-snow), Galanthus snowdrop), Scilla hispanica (Spanish bluebell), and Scilla Siberica (Siberian squill).

With some planning you can actually have fall-planted bulbs flowering from then through late summer, when the Alstro emeria (Peruvian lily) takes center stage.

Fortunately for those of us in the Kansas City area, Johnson County Extension horticulturist  Dennis Patton has written a publication called “Bulbs for the Garden.” It charts all the possibilities and describes the bulbs’ needed care.  It’s among the resources he and the county’s Extension Master Gardeners have made available under “Lawn and Garden” at http://www.johnson.ksu.edu. (Click on “Publications” and then “Perennials.”)

Noxious, Noxious Bindweed

If wild bermudagrass is at the top of your “Weeds I Hate” list, you just haven’t had an up-close-and-personal encounter with field bindweed (creeping jenny).

Unfortunately, bindweed seems to be having a field day in urban landscapes this year. The weed’s been even larger and more aggressive than usual.

If we urban gardeners weren’t looking for the problem, we could already be in trouble. Bindweed is good at “blending.” And, once the vine grows more than 6 inches long, it becomes increasingly difficult to control.

That’s when it starts sending roots deep into the ground and far out on all sides. Researchers have found established bindweeds that extended 30 feet in both directions.

Plus, bindweed is drought-tolerant. Each lateral root can produce a plant at every bud or send out more than a hundred roots of its own. And, the average plant produces about 550 dark brown seeds that can remain viable in the soil for 50 years.

Bindweed can be one of those plants that we know, but may not know that we know. Until it appears in our own yard, we mostly notice it kind of incidentally.

As often as not, the weed shows up first in places that suggest how easily it can spread by taking a ride on some vehicle. It gets established along the street-side edges of lawns and the like. At most, it looks like a low-growing weed ... until it blooms.

Bindweed produces cheerful-looking 1-inch-wide flowers that are pink to white and trumpet-shaped. (It’s related to the  morning glory.) Its leaves are shaped like arrowheads.

As it spreads, we learn that the weed also loves to vine and climb. A shrub can start looking as if it has suddenly developed the ability to bloom in pink to white.

The experts strongly suggest hoeing or pulling the weed up as soon as you see it – preferably before it produces six leaves.

If it’s better established than that, you’ll be stuck with: 1) solarizing the ground under plastic, 2) continuing to pull up the vine – perhaps for years – until it ceases to appear, or 3) controlling it with an appropriate herbicide.

For homeowners, bindweed control in turf requires a combination herbicide that contains both dicamba and quinclorac (e.g., Ortho Weed-B-Gon Max + Crabgrass Control or Bayer All-in-One Lawn Weed and Crabgrass Killer).

Everywhere else, the recommended herbicide is glyphosate, which is sold under many trade names but most commonly known as Roundup. You have to be careful, though, because glyphosate is a nonselective herbicide that will kill any  greenery it hits.

K-State recommends spraying bindweed when it is watered and growing well. It says a treatment will be most effective when “applied to bindweed that is at or beyond full bloom. You can treat earlier, but don't skip the late summer to fall application.”

[See the previous week’s column.]

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