August, 2009 – The Hosta Guru

Thoughts off the top of my head: August, 2009

This mid-August week finds me coming out of the near 100 degree heat and humidity over the weekend and into this cool, (85 degrees) cloudy, rain late the next week. It also finds me between trips to Minnesota and Ohio, and then off to Tennessee and Alabama. All this is fairly typical except for maybe these cloudy and rainy, summer days.

North and South, I have been collecting data on hostas. Unlike my good friend, Mark Zilis, who meticulously measures clumps, leaves, scapes and flowers, (by the way, you must see his new Hostapedia, over 7400 hostas in all), I have just been recording mental measurements on the height of hostas across the country.

I only measure the biggest hostas and only their height. I need no tape measure but just stand next to the clump at the same ground level and measure it against my body. Knee height is about 18”, waist height is 36”, and breast height is 48”. Whenever, I venture North, I am in search of that mythological four foot hosta, with leaves up to here. I found none this year in Michigan, Illinois, or Minnesota. Lot’s of three, even three and a half footers but no four footers. I must travel one day to Northern Indiana where the really tall ones grow.

I am always amazed that any giant hosta growing up North will be so much taller than it is in North Carolina. The leaf size, even the clump width may be similar, but the height varies greatly. A three footer in Michigan may only make it to two feet tall here if well grown. Things get even worse as you head further south.

I hypothesize that it has to do with light intensity, the plants up North stretching upward in the less intense light. It may also have to do with a combination of emergence times and day length. Hostas emerge in late March and April in the South but a month later in the North when the days are longer, the day length exaggerated as you travel north from Chicago to Minneapolis.

It may also have to do with the difference in spring weather patterns. In the South, we have warm spells when the hostas grow rapidly followed by frosty mornings that stop the emergence of shoots and leaves for a few days. Northern springs usually enjoy much more even warming and the hostas just keep shooting up. It may have something to do with soil moisture too, but that varies year to year and the height phenomenon does not.

So you see, hostas in the North always impress me. I just love walking through waist high hostas in some tour garden even if they are only three feet tall. The garden hosts may not share my enthusiasm for walking in the beds but most know that I am garden trained and will pull a weed or two while I am there.

The best large hostas in the world are the round-leafed, highly cupped and puckered ‘Elegans’ seedlings. Many are true three footers with a random leaf reaching 40”. Sandy and Rich Brown in Michigan had a garden full of these blue monsters. ‘Blueberry Waffles’, 14” leaves with that dark blueberry color and lots of , well, waffling, was one of the highlights of the AHS National Convention this year.

‘Elegans’ hybrids are the backbone of the Northern hosta garden. They appear to be very armor-plated plants, too tough for a deer to dine on. What is most appealing however, may be the roundness of the leaf, that perfect unbroken circle, that contrasts and harmonizes with all the other pointed leaves in the garden. In any case, they certainly speak to my inner hosta spirit.

‘Elegans’ hybrids, while still beautiful, are not as impressive in the South. Maybe it is because, emerging late and blooming early, they lose their blue color fairly rapidly and are already drooping in the July heat. They are short season plants in the land of long, hot summers. I would never be without them, but they seem a bit overdressed for the heat.

In the South, Hosta plantaginea is the queen of the mid-summer’s evening. Envision sitting on the verandah in the evening, sipping a mint julep and catching that first hint of fragrance as those huge trumpets begin to open. Usually just before dark you can watch them unfurl, pure white and sensuous. It is a scene from “Gone with the Wind” and may have been, Hosta plantaginea, has been grown in the South since the early 1800’s.

The double flowered forms, ‘Aphrodite’, ‘Venus’, ‘Zeus’, etc. often frustrate me as I wait night after night for them to swell and finally open. It is always a race to see if one or two or maybe three flowers will open before the whole scape turns brown and aborts. I grow mine in pots with saucers of water underneath to keep them moist and hopefully hold out longer. This year we have had the perfect combination of humidity and almost nightly rain, so hope springs eternal, maybe tonight.

For me, I would rather have two pots of the good old green August Lily, on the deck. The variegated ‘Ming Treasure’ is okay but weak and yellow centered ‘Chelsea

Ore’ weaker still. I do now have some seedlings that are yellow in the spring and retain the huge fragrant flowers. They too lack some vigor because they are yellow. Hopefully one will grow well enough to introduce.

August in the South is the time of hosta fragrance in the garden. The ‘Fragrant Bouquet’ clan, ‘Guacamole’, ‘Stained Glass’, ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’ and the newer tetraploid forms like ‘Holy Mole’ and ‘Cathedral Windows’, make great pot or garden plants. They open in the morning and bring the sweet smell of hostas into the garden on the hottest of days. They also bloom at nose height, which make inhaling their fragrance irresistible.

Northern gardens then are the realm of Hosta sieboldiana and Southern gardens the home of Hosta plantaginea. While both hostas will grow in the North or the South each is more spectacular in the climate to which they are best adapted. The short season H. sieboldiana in Michigan and the long season H. plantaginea in North Carolina.

This may sound a little unusual coming from a nurseryman that would like you to buy more hostas, but maybe you should try growing some hostas from seed. Yes, they will be low cost, nothing is free, but they will also be uniquely yours. Hosta hybridizing, even if it is only growing the seeds that the bees have set for you, is the next step in becoming a better hosta collector. Give it a try. Here are a few tips:

Planting seeds is easy. Most hosta seed growers start their seeds under lights during the winter. I use a simple method of sowing the seed anytime between October and January, depending on how long I want to baby them before it stays warm outside. I sow on top of the soil and cover with a little milled peat moss and place a dome over the flat. I bottom water. Transplant if you like when they have two or three leaves into cells of 96 or 72, but still keep the domes on until the plants push them up. Low maintenance. Transplant again when they can go outside. You can also prepare a seedbed outside in the garden and sow the seeds in it in the fall. They will come up in the spring just like all the unwanted volunteers you get every year. You can then pot them up or leave them in the ground to grow until next year. Really easy.
It is best to choose scapes with many pods, their seeds tend to be more fertile. Plant five or more pods from the same scape to allow for some genetic variability.
Choose a scape or two from a yellow or gold hosta. Gold hostas will usually produce green, yellow, and maybe blue seedlings. Three for the price of one.
Seeds from a streaked plant may yield variegated, usually streaked, seedlings. Other variegated hostas usually do not.
Large hostas will produce large seedlings, miniature hostas will produce small but rarely miniature hostas. You will need to grow more seeds to get minis.