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Fall aster, a Texas heirloom plant, has been making a comeback at retail nurseries in recent years.

DEAR NEIL: I took this photo last fall at a garden in South Texas. I’d like to grow this plant. What can you tell me about it? Will I have any trouble finding it?

Dear Reader: That’s fall aster. It’s an heirloom Texas perennial that our grandmamas grew. For many years you only saw it in older neighborhoods, but over the past 30 or 35 years it’s made its way back into the mainstream retail nursery trade.

It blooms for several weeks, generally in late September and into October. It’s often showcased in retail garden centers with their pumpkin displays to take advantage of the contrast of colors. Ask ahead. If they don’t plan on having it, they can order it in for you, generally in 1-gallon pots.

The plants grow to be 24 inches tall and wide. Their leaves are tiny and virtually unnoticeable until the plants pop into bloom. Bees and butterflies love it, so it brings excitement to its surroundings.

Once it finishes blooming you can prune the old flowering stems back close to the ground. It’s also a good idea to pinch-prune the plants to remove an inch or so of the growing tips in late spring or early summer to keep the plants more compact.

DEAR NEIL: I’m starting to worry about my oak trees during this drought. We’ve already had to lower the pump in our well, so we are trying to conserve water. What is the best way to keep them alive?

Dear Reader: Unfortunately, when they need water, nothing short of water will do.

Without seeing your trees I can’t really advise you, but much will depend on factors like the species of oaks involved, age of the trees, whether they’re established native oaks or newly planted within the past five or ten years, their vigor coming out of the record cold 18 months ago, depth of soil and so on.

Luckily, we’re toward the end of the hottest part of the year, so the demand for water should begin to lessen. If you could lay a soaker hose around their drip lines and run it slowly for several hours that would really help, but I do understand the angst of concern over running the well dry. I would not recommend fertilizing them this fall.

DEAR NEIL: I had St. Augustine replaced the last week of April. I have watered faithfully almost every day since, but the grass is very patchy. Only three small areas from a separate batch look good.

I may have a struggle getting restitution from my landscaper. How would I find a consultant to advise me?

Dear Reader: You mentioned that this new St. Augustine was being used to replace prior turf. What happened to it? Before I blame the new grass, I’d like to examine if there could be a problem with the setting.

This is the most common problem I have encountered in more than 50 years of doing gardening talk shows, writing gardening columns and doing work for the Extension Service.

St. Augustine is our most shade-tolerant lawn grass. But it’s tough to get new sod established if there is a great deal of shade. That’s not the landscaper’s fault.

Watering “almost daily” is, once the new grass is rooted (a couple of weeks) too frequent and not good for the grass.

I’d want to look for signs of gray leaf spot. If you have fertilized the new grass during the summer, that fungus would have been promoted and it would have left the turf looking patchy.

So, there are many factors outside the control of the landscaper that might have contributed to the poor outcome of the new grass. As for a turf grass consultant, you might ask at several sod vendors and at companies that sell professional turf grass supplies to golf courses and athletic fields. They usually know people who are well versed in turf.

The Texas AgriLife Extension turf specialists are good, although don’t look to them to take one side or the other. They will identify what problems they see and give their best opinions as to how you can move past them.

DEAR NEIL: Is there a way to transplant runners of English ivy from a neighbor’s bed into a new bed I’m trying to start?

Dear Reader: Perhaps so, but I’ve always had great results taking the runners and cutting them into pieces with one leaf per cutting, its petiole (the “stem” of the leaf) and a 1- or 2-inch piece of the true stem of the ivy, then planting three or four of those cuttings per 4-inch plastic pot filled with loose, highly organic potting soil.

I keep them moist and humid (beneath a loosely draped sheet of plastic this time of year) and in the shade until they develop roots and start sending out new stems.

This works much better and faster than the couple of times I tried digging up footlong stems and trying to transplant them.

Have a question you’d like Neil to consider? Email him at mailbag@sperrygardens.com. Neil regrets that he cannot reply to questions individually.

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Fall aster, a Texas heirloom plant, has been making a comeback at retail nurseries in recent years.

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