Thoughts off the top of my head August 2019
First, I must apologize again for this issue being very late. Things used to slow down in August here at the nursery, but I guess those days are gone. The hosta liner business keeps expanding, and August has become just another busy shipping month. In addition, I gave several presentations in Tennessee at the end of August (3 talks in 4 days), and my Midwest tour of 5 talks in 8 days made September fly by. So again, I am sorry, but here are my “thoughts”, hopefully better late than never.
I was also in Iowa in late July. (Yes, that is how I put so many miles on my old truck each year.) Josh Spece invited me to be part of his annual ice cream social at his nursery, In the Country Garden and Gifts, near Independence. It was a great success with maybe 200 people attending. It was like a one-day Regional Hosta Meeting with attendees from 5 states centered around a day in the garden and nursery, lunch, and my talk. It was a blast!
At the morning meet and greet I was able to talk with many of Josh’s customers, some serious collectors with established gardens but also many younger folks just beginning to fall in love with hostas. When one of these “beginners” told me that the first hosta he ever bought was ‘First Blush’ PP#28,920 I realized probably for the first time that times had changed dramatically from when I first started growing hostas.
It opened me to a new way of thinking. There are no longer “beginner” hostas that people new to hostas buy to get started. While ‘June’ and ‘Guacamole’ are still great garden plants, new collectors can now create a collection of hot, new red-petioled hostas if that’s what excites them. Now, they can just start with the great new hostas that are being introduced and never have to look back to the likes of ‘Royal Standard’ and ‘Frances Williams’. Besides, many of those old favorites are getting harder to find as newer hostas replace them.
Further, there are really no “beginner” hosta collectors anymore either, they are all very knowledgeable. In a very short period of time, the knowledge about hostas that took me 20 years to amass can now be found on the Hosta Library, Facebook, Hosta.org, and other commercial hosta sites on the Internet. Folks new to hostas can make more informed hosta choices for their gardens and choose from better plants, too. That is not to say that they still won’t buy a mediocre hosta because of its name from time to time but isn’t that what even the savviest of collectors makes a habit of doing?
Think of it this way. I grew up with a rotary dial phone attached to the kitchen wall by the door. Then came touch tone phones, answering machines, flip cell phones, and now smart phones. Small children today are often handed a smart phone instead of a toy to hold their attention. Their world is totally contained in one electronic device and they have no need or desire for older technology. Think of hostas that way. New collectors no longer need or desire all those white-margined hostas from the Lachmans’ we bought years ago for a hundred or more dollars when they were cutting edge. They may prefer ‘Striptease’ sports instead or giant green hostas like ‘Empress Wu’.
For some of you this may make you a little sad but not me. I am all for progress in the hosta world; although I am still hanging on to my “not so smart” flip phone and vowing never to text. Some “old” hostas will be here forever; they are just too good to disappear, but most of the hostas that will be collected in the next ten years will be new introductions. Let’s look at why.
There are a host of good hosta hybridizers producing thousands of new hosta seedlings each year. They really fall into three categories. First, there are hostas that are improved versions of “classic-form” hostas. They are generally ones that flower early, produce a lot of seeds and are large plants. They are yellow, blue, green, and variegated forms of the H. sieboldiana/H. montana type, with their rounded leaves, cupping and puckering. They are the archetypical hosta in form, a clump shape that we all love. These newer, improved configurations get bigger, more puckered, and hold their color better than their parents, and are also spectacular in the garden.
The second group of hostas are the ones I try to hybridize. These hostas have new combinations of genes and traits and are distinctly different from older hybrids. They are new technology, “smart hostas”. They will have new colors especially red and purple in the leaves and scapes. They will have flowers with new interesting colors, some double flowered, some with extra petals. As hybridizers push the hosta genome as far as they can, some of these plants will just be “weird”. But weird is very marketable; take ‘Road Rage’ for example.
The last group of hostas rarely finds its way into the general hosta market. They are primarily hostas hybridized for other hosta hybridizers. Many are streaked plants to use in variegated breeding and most are rare and in short supply. Collectors can have access to these on Facebook or by visiting hosta hybridizers who are generally a very generous group, sharing their babies with others. These named or sometimes unnamed hostas become another example that hostas really are the friendship plant as hosta and human relationships meld together.
So, where do we go from here? Maybe we should all look at the newest hostas with fresh eyes. Do we want something really different or do we want something more familiar and maybe more comfortable? As hostas collections grow and space becomes a limiting factor does price matter all that much? If you buy only a few new hostas each year (if that is remotely possible), then cost really does not matter. Instead of buying 20 hostas at $15 each, you just buy 5 at $50 and you have less holes to dig or pots to overwinter. Plus, you have money left over for lunch on the way home.
As I sit here, I begin to wonder, what would be the first hosta I would buy if I somehow could start over collecting hostas today? I know it would not be variegated, the old me is so over streaks, borders, and white centers, but would the “beginner” me feel the same way? I think so. I would now be most attracted to a yellow hosta as I have always been in my life with hostas but this time it would be a yellow one with lots of red on the leaves and scapes. Those are the hostas I most admire as seedlings now and they did not exist at all when I was beginning my hosta journey in the early 1980’s.
I would also want more fragrant-flowered hostas, maybe a garden full of them. Traveling through the countryside in Maryland in mid-August, I passed several older gardens with great sweeps of Hosta plantaginea in full bloom. Those masses of huge pure white 8-inch flowers shone brightly under their shaded canopy. A hosta that many cannot grow as well as they would like, flourished as if it were naturalized. To tell the truth, it was a little surreal and maybe dreamlike, not your typical roadside hosta garden.
When I ask hosta folks which is their favorite hosta, it is almost always one of the first hostas they ever acquired. Frequently, it was a gift or an inexpensive purchase when they considered themselves a “beginner”. With all the new flashy hostas now on the market this surprises me every time, but I guess it is more about that moment in time than the plant. I understand those feelings of nostalgia but let me suggest you take a moment now with fresh eyes and dream hostas. Then make those dreams come true.
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The last of my five talks in the Midwest last month was in St. Louis. This well-established hosta group has many long time hosta collectors whose gardens have been on tour for numerous national and regional conventions. It is a group with an institutional memory of not only hosta cultivars but also the changes in Hostadom that have occurred in the past few decades. I was asked to speak on the future of hostas, a topic I reinvent every five years or so. Of course, I talked about new hostas, many too new to be named, but also the future of hosta clubs and the hosta nursery business.
Five years ago, Q & Z Nursery closed its doors preceded the year before by Shady Oaks Nursery. These two large wholesale nurseries were the leading introducers of new cutting edge hostas to the hosta nursery trade. They both used their large tissue culture labs to produce hosta liners, plugs, that were then sold to retailers who usually grew them on for a year or more before selling them to the gardening public. At their height maybe as many as 400 new hostas were introduced per year between the two nurseries.
To some of us, this seemed like the end of the world as we knew it. My nursery, Green Hill Farm, bought probably 95% of our hostas from these two nurseries most on an exclusive contract basis. The next January I gave a sort of “State of the State of Hostadom” talk at the Winter Scientific meeting in Chicago and made several predictions. I thought it might be fun to revisit those educated guesses and see how things have changed five years later.
- Predictions: I thought we might see a lot of little tissue culture labs spring up doing custom propagation. In fact, this did not really happen. I think tissue culturing hostas may be more of an art than just an easily repeated method. Every hosta acts a little differently in culture, and then there are the inevitable problems with contamination. I still think labs producing small numbers of plants are viable in this market if they charge more for their products. Many hybridizers want just a small number of a prized seedling to offer at a high price and are willing to pay more for a smaller amount of plants.
- I predicted that propagation by division would make a big comeback, and it has. Many old standard hostas are no longer available from tissue culture, so division is necessary to continue to have them in inventory. Also, many new hostas are no longer sent to the lab to be propagated but sold from divisions only as “originator’s stock”. This has led to the introduction of high-priced seedlings, as I predicted, selling for $200 or more per plant.
- I also predicted or maybe hoped that the new hostas introduced would be very different from the ones we have now; hostas that were hybridizing breakthroughs with selection based on distinctness not familiarity. If this is happening now, it is at slower rate than I had hoped. We have lots of large, early flowering blue, yellow and variegated hostas with similar parentages. But we also like that look very much, which makes them very marketable.
- There is however exciting work being done with hybridizing hosta flowers currently; new colors, yellow, red, green, even black flowers many with interesting stripped patterns. There are double flowers, and flowers with extra petals. It remains to be seen if the gardening public will buy small to medium-sized hostas with plain green foliage just because they have great flowers. I guess it is my job to try to talk them into it.
- What I did not predict was the rise of Facebook as a central worldwide location in Hostadom. There are at least fourteen, yes 14 hosta groups on Facebook. There is a seed group, a seedling group, hostas to buy from growers or win at auction, and lots and lots of photos. Facebook has created a new inexpensive way to sell hostas for the small grower who is willing to ship plants. My understanding is that with almost 6000 members the Hosta Buyers Guide has been a great innovation and success.
- Finally, as some of our favorite hosta nurseries like Wade and Gatton and Hallson Gardens are closing, other new hosta nurseries are opening to fill the gaps created. Iowa and Wisconsin are now hotbeds of hosta activity. The AHS Convention in Green Bay drew over 500 attendees this June. At Green Hill Farm, we will continue to offer great new hostas to the retail and wholesale trade. Five years after losing our largest hosta liner supplier we are now in the hosta liner business offering scores of new introductions to the hosta specialty nurseries that you support.
- As it turns out, things are better off than I had feared.
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Speaking of things changing in Hostadom, there is an increasing number of hosta collectors growing their hostas in containers. I am not just talking about minis and mice in troughs but large hostas too. In the South where we do not have to worry about winter protection for our container grown hostas, we have been doing this now for years. But now the trend is growing even in very cold climes like Iowa and Minnesota. In fact, I have been asked to give my “Growing Hostas in Containers’ talk next February in both Minneapolis and Northern Wisconsin.
There are several obvious reasons for choosing containers for hostas over committing them to the ground. The first is the lack of ground to commit them with gardens running out of space for new additions. The second is the labor involved in digging holes and maintenance required to maintain new and existing beds. Hostas are supposed to be fun but sometimes digging holes in the heat of summer can be a little less than fun, even if your spouse is doing the digging. Container gardening is easier, potting and dividing plants at countertop level.
There is a more important reason to consider growing hostas in pots; they frequently grow better. A container can provide well drained organic potting soil perfect for maximum healthy hosta root growth. And roots matter! In the garden, we see only the foliage of our hostas year to year and really have no idea what their roots are doing underground. Frequently, garden soil becomes compacted, repelling more water that it takes up and then there are the pesky trees. Tree roots will strangle hosta roots, and suddenly one spring your prize clumps have shrunk to tiny tissue culture plants. We have all felt that pain.
Containers, while not always the most appealing way to display hostas, can pretty much defeat tree roots with a minimum of maintenance and allow hostas to get and keep the water they need to grow and bloom. Containers also maximize the fertilizer available to your hostas keeping it from being stolen by those hungry trees. Using a liquid fertilizer exclusively will even more accurately target the nutrients that make for healthy hostas.
A happy hosta is a blooming hosta. Do your hostas bloom or are they reluctant to flower? If they do not bloom then they need either more water at bloom time, more fertilizer in the spring when they are actively making leaves, or more light (or less shade). Containers can also allow hostas to be moved to sunnier or shadier parts of the garden to adjust for just the right amount of light as the sun moves through the tree canopy in summer.
Containers then can be the perfect solution to growing hostas in difficult areas. When I first started growing hostas I was told that they were the perfect solution to plant under trees in those spots where you could not grow grass. Just put in raised beds and hostas will flourish. Well, they did for a few years, and then the tree roots started to dominate them. Turns out the places where it is difficult to have a lawn will in time be just as difficult to grow hostas. A container garden may be the best solution; just remember to put flagstone under the pots, or lift them once or twice a year to snap off the invading tree roots.
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Water!!! Hostas do grow on rocks in Japan, but they still crave water. Heavy rains, if they do not dislodge them and send them screaming downstream, provide ample moisture for them. Fog in southern Japan also reduces evaporation, creating tropical conditions. Few places in the US however mimic these conditions.
I saw struggling hostas almost everywhere I traveled this summer, especially in public gardens and commercial sites. They suffered from a triple whammy of tree roots, lack of fertilizer and too much shade. Even in Iowa, legendary for its rich deep soils, hostas cannot be planted under trees and shrubs in dense shade and left to fend for themselves. They are both hungry and thirsty by late summer only to regress the next spring.
I have found this in my own tree root infested garden. In shade they just soldier through but in sunnier spots they become pretty crispy by August. Hostas must be irrigated! Somehow overhead irrigation has gotten a bad reputation. We use it here at the nursery and in the garden. In my experience, contrary to what you might have read, it does not wash off the white wax that makes hostas blue but does drench my hostas with lots of water in a short period of time. Then they dry out and are drenched again in a day or two; and they seem to love it. Afterall, what is the precious rain we all desire for our gardens but overhead watering?
Finally, I am always saddened when well-meaning folks divide large clumps of some of our old favorite large hostas like ‘Honeybells’, or worse yet slow growing ‘Frances Williams’ and plant them in a public area in heavy clay soil and deep shade without irrigation. Yes, they probably will survive because hostas are tough, but they will not be happy hostas blooming their hearts out. They would do much better in a planter free of tree roots in bright morning sun. Hostas are not really as hard to grow as we make it out to be, but they do need a little help from their human friends to flourish.
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Speaking of human help, I was surprised to see that many of the hostas I saw in Japan were growing in habitats altered, sometimes heavily by man. Many of the rivers in Japan have been channelized with concrete structures to reduce the riverbanks from washing away during flooding. Hostas seem to thrive on these man-made rocky situations as they act as a colonizing species. Hosta seeds will even stick and grow on bare concrete walls!
We also found hostas colonizing the cement blocks of a retaining wall along a highway where the water would flow down during rainstorms. In southern Japan, roads up into the mountains often follow rivers and streams as they do in this country. Frequently, the rocky slope is blasted away with explosives leaving a moist, partially shaded rockface. Here a collection of ferns and other perennials find homes including Hosta kikutii and Hosta longipes.
This is just another example of the close relationship between hostas and their human friends. Some species of plants and animals do not adapt well to the changes humans make to the environment, but some do. Just like the deer that are now born in your urban garden, hostas have found themselves very comfortable with man as a neighbor, either in the wild or in your hosta garden. It is a mutual love affair.