Starting hosta growth in a green house

There are no perfect hostas! You name the plant and I will tell you how it could be improved. 'Sum and Substance' has floppy scapes and suffers from desiccation burn in the spring. 'Sagae' comes up too early and freezes. Being negative is easy, but let's look at the bright side of hostas. 'Sum and Substance' is the most popular hosta around because of its unique size, leaf shape, and the impact that the bright gold foliage makes in the garden. It is easily recognizable where ever it grows and it has a memorable name that fits the plant. It is easily grown to an enormous size almost everywhere. It makes a statement. So, what makes a good hosta? A good hosta is one that is "pretty to look at". I think most of us see it the same way. It is hosta colour that catches our eye first. A good hosta attracts the eye with colour and then seduces us with its other charms.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the hosta colour combinations that turn me on are definitely different than what does it for my customers. Anything with a lighter centre is hot right now. Golds with dark green edges, blues with light yellow centres, and almost anything with a pure white centre are in high demand. Waxy blues and dark greens are also current eye-catchers. It is the colour, aqua or green turquoise leaves with red petioles that makes an interesting hosta.

To take this a step farther, the reoccurring fascination with streaked hostas has come around again. Be it a small seedling or an ephemeral sport, streaked hostas are being named left and right in America for their colour alone. Nothing else seems to matter, not leaf shape, texture, or substance, not distinctness, not even if it will grow. Colour has become for some collectors the only criteria for purchasing a hosta.

For myself colour is only the beginning. How does the hosta display that colour? Red petioles are most useful on an upright clump. If you you have to lift the foliage to view them, they are unlikely to catch your eye except in a bottle at a leaf show. What makes some small hostas "cute" is the neat way they lay out their leaves.

Hostas are very versatile plants as they will survive in almost any soil condition and some varieties prefer full sun, usually the gold leaved varieties, down to shady areas below trees, usually the green to blue leaved varieties, will survive only if given a good start at planting. Hostas put all there energy into making leaves in the spring thus require high nitrogen levels in the soil. Garden compost or well rotted farmyard manure is best mulched over the hosta during the winter. This protects the growing buds in the winter and releases the nutrients down into the soil for the srpring explosion of foliage. Never let your hosta flower in the first year after planting as this takes all the plants energy out of the roots to produce seed and means that it will have a weak root system built up for the winter dormancy and will not flourish as well the following year.

Some of the newer varieties coming onto the market now like 'Fire and Ice' are very bright in early spring and really does lift the whole garden in early spring especially if mulched with peat or gravel to make the colour stand out. Mail order is the best way to purchase your hostas as you are getting them in the autumn, early spring when they are dormant and will take much better in your soil conditions at this stage as all the energy is built up in the root system, and you are buying the hostas bare root which have been grown under ideal conditions on the nurseries and it is a shock to a hosta or indeed any perennial planting them in the summer from pots when are actively growing they can suffer from drying out, lack of nutrients and hard compacted soil.

The foliage of the hostas need to be protect early on from slug damage as they only make one set of leaves and if a slug munches away at the growing buds in early spring they will all come up looking like they have been through the "shredder".

I hope this gives you a better insight into hostas and the joy of starting your own collection.