Being a parodist by nature (I was working on "The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective People" when someone else published under the same title!) I was sorely tempted to write "When Good Things Happen To Bad People" as a humorous attempt to explain why so many SOBs seem to end up rich and/or in positions of authority.
Anyway, this NPOTD installment might be entitled "When Good Things Happen To Bad Gardeners."
In a completely successful good year, when our lives are manageable and we can dedicate ourselves properly to the garden, we will weed, fertilize, Preen, and mulch all of our gardens by early June.
Unfortunately, Life Happens, so we haven't had a completely successful good year since... well... ever, I guess! But the last several years have been particularly busy as our May hosta sale has grown into a small business and then we have travelled for the whole month of June for the past two years.
So the weeding doesn't get done properly. And the Preen (a chemical product that retards the germination of weed seeds) doesn't get spread. And the mulch composts into a good seed-starting medium.
But the Law of Unintended Consequences has positive results as well as negative. Even after gardening with hostas for many years and having raised them from seed, I had no idea just how easily they reseed in the garden. They seem to come up in any place left undisturbed. We miss weeding a section - next year there are a bunch of hosta babies peeking up. We miss spraying roundup on our (fake) cobblestone walkways - there are baby hostas everywhere. The railroad tie walkways accumulate a little dirt between the ties, or in crevasses in the ties - more baby hostas.
And, being softies, we hate to pull out a hosta. When we see one, we leave it. We are sure we will get back to it and will move it into our "back forty." We are, of course, kidding ourselves. We won't get back to them. We are busy gardeners. They will stay there - always in the wrong place - growing larger. The next time we see them, it will be even harder to pull the seedling. The net result is a mess... but a fun mess. A few photos to illustrate...
A nice, established, labeled 'Medusa' in a showy part of our garden... and what is THAT doing there!
And that one is 'Junior Miss'... no - the variegated one... the blue one is a... volunteer...
Registry - http://www.hostaregistrar.org/detail.ph ... ior%20Miss
MyHostas - http://myhostas.be/db/hostas/Junior+Miss
Hosta Library - http://www.hostalibrary.org/j/juniormiss.html
Here we have a nice planting with 'Last Dance' at the top, 'Flash of Light' in the middle, and the delightful 'Kiwi Blue Baby' at the bottom... whoops, where is FOL? OK... change in plans... this is a display showing that the seeds, possibly from the same seed pod, can give you yellow, green, and blue seedlings!
'Kiwi Blue Baby'
Registry - http://www.hostaregistrar.org/detail.ph ... lue%20Baby
MyHostas - http://myhostas.be/db/hostas/Kiwi+Blue+Baby
Hosta Library - http://www.hostalibrary.org/k/kiwib.html
this was taken a week or so ago. The leaves of the yellow seedling have now become gigantic montana-like and Kiwi Blue Baby is now almost totally covered.
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I especially like the blue & the yellow from the last grouping. But the 1st one is pretty darn nice too. Nice leaf form & I like the way the leaves are held up.
