2014 was a crazy one in the hosta world with the passing of Shady Oaks Nursery and Q & Z Nursery in the same season, and those of us in the business are still left wondering who will take their place. I suspect that a lot of nurseries will fall back to buying Dutch grown plants, which will mean an increase of nematodes and virus on the market I'm afraid. But it will also leave an opportunity for an entrepreneur to come along and take over the niche market of hosta tissue culture plants. Heck, maybe Mark Zilis will pop back up and start putting hostas out again leaving us all scratching our heads. Don't start thinking that I'll be doing any of my own tissue culture work because we certainly don't have that kind of funding available nor the desire to take on something of that magnitude.
On a personal note, 2014 was a year that I will remember for a different reason. For several years I've been plagued with pain that I and even some doctors thought was due to kidney stones, which I have had for years, while other doctors insisted I must be a drug seeker, but by the end of the summer, after the pain got to the point of barely allowing me to be able to function, I finally found out what was really going on and got some help. I was having trouble digging and could barely climb the stairs to go to bed at night and after numerous phone calls I finally found a doctor who took me serious and helped me to find out that the primary pain I've been having is due to a herniated thoracic disc. I also have other protruding lumbar discs, arthritis in my spine, and two large hemangiomas in my lumbar as well. Unfortunately treatment in August set me back even worse so I went to the University of Michigan for a second opinion where I learned that arthritis in my SI joint was the main cause of my low back pain and leg pain, while the rest of the issues in my lower back are not actually causing any problems. The doctor told me that most people who work for a living will have herniated discs in their lumbar, and even though it looked like a train wreck the main issues I was having were in my hip. The thoracic herniated disc is still causing me some problems but I'm taking Gabapentin which is helping and I go for a spinal injection in a couple weeks.
So where does that leave me now? After 6 weeks of physical therapy which I just finished before the holidays I'm feeling better than I have in almost 10 years. I'm working just fine, walking just fine, can run up a flight of stairs as if it was nothing (during the summer I was sleeping downstairs and thought I would have to permanently move my bed to the first floor), and I'm finally finishing up several big projects that we had been planning for years. 2014 was the summer that I had to just sort of coast through, but 2015 is really looking bright for me now and you will be hearing from me a lot more this season. I promise!
On the hosta side, 2014 ended up being a rebuilding year for us so we have an excellent supply here for the next few seasons. We had been operating near capacity for years and in 2013 we went beyond that a little so the hosta inventory had dropped some. We opened up more production space last year and have a really nice crop coming up for the future. I'm working on the online catalog for 2015 right now, in between working on those big projects I mentioned, and it should have some nice new additions, including the newest introduction of Hosta 'Summer Rainbow', with even more plants coming to our inventory in 2016. Watch for the finished 2015 catalog in the next few weeks.
We also have some other very exciting future news to share regarding three more of our introductions, but I'll save that for another time.
Thanks for taking the time to read up on my year, and feel free to share your ups and downs of the last year too. I'd also love to hear what will be exciting for you in the upcoming hosta summer
Happy new year!
Chris
